“It is possible to reverse aging, to go back in time,” said Pura Munoz-Canoves, a biologist at Altos Labs, an American biotechnology research company.
In an interview published yesterday in El Pais, one of Spain’s leading newspapers, Munoz-Canoves said: “We are trying to keep cells and organisms young and healthy for as long as possible. In other words, we are trying to delay the onset of diseases, to turn back the clock a little bit.”
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Munoz-Canoves, who works on extending human life at Altos Labs, headquartered in Silicon Valley in California, USA, stated that they focus on delaying aging by strengthening cells and allowing them to rebuild themselves.
Shinya Yamanaka, who heads Altos Labs’ scientific advisory board, developed a method he called “cellular reprogramming” in 2006, which is both groundbreaking and the basis for technologies that aim to extend human lifespan by preventing aging.
The company’s staff includes biochemistry expert Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte. In a study published in 2016, Belmonte developed a method to reduce cellular and physiological signs of aging in living mice, extending their life span by an average of 6 weeks.
Referring to these studies, Munoz-Canoves said, “Aging can be reversed. A cell can be rejuvenated,” he said. The 61-year-old scientist noted that the studies are still in their early stages and they are examining how this could develop in humans.
The Spanish biologist, who worked at Pampeu Fabra University in Barcelona before joining Altos Labs, continued:
We have better hygiene conditions. We have access to vaccines, education and health care. It will not be very complicated for those who are on earth now to live to be 100 years old, or for those who are just born to live more than 100 years. But I don’t know if it will be 120, 130, 140. It’s a very revolutionary thing to rejuvenate and turn back the clock. It’s not going to happen tomorrow. But the accumulation of progress will allow us to move forward faster than we think.
Altos Labs, which has a budget of approximately 3 billion dollars, has also received investments from Jeff Bezos, founder of e-commerce giant Amazon, and Russian-born Israeli businessman, entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner.
fikrikadim: El Pais
