The biotech Altos Labs has exited stealth mode with top-tier talent and $3 billion in funding with a broad mission of promoting homeostasis in cells to reverse disease, injury and disability.
In other words, the company aims to use biotechnology to fight aging and disease, as early media reports have suggested.
In a press release, Altos chief scientist and founder said the company sought to “decipher the pathways of cellular rejuvenation programming to create a completely new approach to medicine, one based on the emerging concepts of cellular health.”
Early investors reportedly include the billionaires Yuri Milner and Jeff Bezos.
Altos Labs’ funding haul will likely free it from resorting to selling intellectual property to established biotech companies.
GSK’s current president of R&D and chief scientific officer, Dr. Hal Barron, will become the company’s CEO on August 1.
Barron also worked as the president of R&D of Calico Life Sciences from 2014 to 2017. An Alphabet subsidiary, Calico, made a splash in 2014 given its quest to “cure death,” as several media reports quipped.
Altos Labs has also recruited noted Spanish biochemist Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Nobel Prize-winner Shinya Yamanaka and Steve Horvath, who developed the Horvath aging clock.
Heading up AI efforts will be Thore Graepel, who is currently research lead at Google DeepMind and a professor of computer science at the University College London.
The DeepMind lab made a splash in late 2020 when it accurately predicted protein structures.
The company has facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego and Cambridge, UK. It also plans on having a presence in Japan.
Filed Under: Data science, Drug Discovery
