When a startup called Retro Biosciences eased out of stealth mode in mid-2022, it announced it had secured $180 million to bankroll an audacious mission: to add 10 years to the average human life span. It had set up its headquarters in a raw warehouse space near San Francisco just the year before, bolting shipping containers to the concrete floor to quickly make lab space for the scientists who had been enticed to join the company.
Retro said that it would “prize speed” and “tighten feedback loops” as part of an “aggressive mission” to stall aging, or even reverse it. But it was vague about where its money had come from. At the time, it was a “mysterious startup,” according to pressreports, “whose investors remain anonymous.”
Now MIT Technology Review can reveal that the entire sum was put up by Sam Altman, the 37-year-old startup guru and investor who is CEO of OpenAI.
Retro Biosciences, backed by Sam Altman, is raising $1 billion to extend human lifespan
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is doubling down on Retro Biosciences, a biotech startup based in San Francisco that wants humans to live 10 years longer than what it calls a healthy human lifespan.
Altman previously provided Retro Biosciences’ entire seed round of $180 million. Now, the startup is raising a $1 billion Series A that Altman is joining, the Financial Times reports.
The biotech’s first drug candidate to be tested in a trial is a pill that restores a cell’s internal recycling process, the failure of which has been linked to diseases such as Alzheimer’s — the most common form of dementia with more than 55mn sufferers worldwide. But drug developers have struggled to turn back the clock on the disease, with existing treatments only slowing patients’ decline. The next two drugs will be cell therapies, one of which will also target Alzheimer’s by replacing the brain cells known as microglia, in a plan that Betts-LaCroix said is a “bit more sci-fi but extremely powerful”. The third is a treatment to replace stem cells in the blood with younger ones. “If you’re 85 years old and you undergo this therapy, you can replace your blood stem cells with ones that are zero age, and then those ripple out and produce all your blood,” he said. “So basically, it’s like having 80 per cent of all your cells become zero age.”
The more the merrier. Can’t hurt, might help. Having said that, the results of similar efforts by Silicon Valley tech bros, like the Google effort have shown very disappointing delivery - at least so far. It is my suspicion that the tech bros are not familiar with the special requirements of medical research, and not being familiar with the field, tend to hire random people to put in charge, with poor results. They need to put someone like Matt Kaeberlein in charge of the research, but not knowing the field, they don’t know of MK. Look at Bryan Johnson, another tech bro - his whole approach is like a tech startup, throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the body assuming that somehow all of this synergizes and optimizes in an additive manner. And he ends up with a giant pile of higgedly piggedly heaped together supplements, drugs and interventions. Who is in charge of all this, and does he know who is truly qualified?
Anyhow, I wish this venture success, since we can all benefit, hopefully. We’ll see.
A new interview with the CEO of Retro Biosciences:
here’s the full conversation with CEO Joe Betts-LaCroix, uncut and uninterrupted.
Retro’s goal is to add ten healthy years to every human life. And with $180 million in backing from Sam Altman, they’re not exactly thinking small.
In this chat, we get into the science, the vision, the moonshot mindset, and what it takes to tackle aging itself. If you’re into biotech, longevity, or just bold ideas that might change the world… this one’s for you.
he was chief executive officer of Genentech from July 1995 to April 2009. He currently serves as the chairman of the board of Apple, and previously served as a director of Google from 2004 to 2009.
He has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific articles and has been named an inventor on 11 United States patents. Art was inducted into the Biotech Hall of Fame at the 2003 Biotech Meeting of chief executive officers. BusinessWeek named him one of the “Best Managers of the Year” in 2004 and 2005, and Institutional Investor named him “America’s Best CEO” in the biotech category four years in a row (2004–2007). In 2006, Princeton University awarded Art the James Madison Medal for a distinguished career in scientific research and in biotechnology. In 2008, he was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2011, Art received the American Association for Cancer Research Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research, and in 2012 he received the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Double Helix Medal. In 2014, he received the Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus Award from the University of Washington, and was honored as a recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama. The Franklin Institute named Levinson as the recipient of the 2021 Bower Award for Business Leadership, which recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in an American business or industry while adhering to the highest ethical standards.
Art earned a doctorate in biochemical sciences from Princeton University and his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Washington.
Prior to joining Altos, Hal was Chief Scientific Officer and President, R&D at GSK, where he was responsible for all research and development activities globally across pharmaceutical molecules and vaccine candidates including life-cycle management for all approved products. He remains a non-executive director on GSK’s Board of Directors.
Prior to joining GSK, Hal was President, R&D at Calico Labs, an Alphabet-funded company. Prior to this role, he was Executive Vice President, Head of Global Product Development, and Chief Medical Officer of Roche, responsible for all the products in the combined portfolio of Roche and Genentech. At Genentech, Hal was Senior Vice President of Development and Chief Medical Officer. He was a non-executive director and chair of the Science & Technology Committee at Juno Therapeutics until March 2018, when it was acquired by Celgene Corporation. He also previously served as a non-executive Board director of Grail until it was acquired by Illumina in 2021. He was also an Advisory Board Member of Verily Life Sciences until 2021.
Hal holds a BS in Physics from Washington University in St. Louis and a MD from Yale University. He completed his training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Hal has been issued several patents for his work in thrombosis and angiogenesis and has published more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He also continues to teach as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
This sort of statement implies a misunderstanding of the science said for marketing reasons. A better objective is to understand the aging process and to develop interventions to mitigate it.
To add numbers to this indicates they already understand the process which they don’t.
The number they use is arbitrary and in the end meaningless.
He says their goal is to add 10 years of healthy life to humanity
That sounds like a good type of goal (is defined, it can unite the employees and stakeholders, it can be communicated well to the public, etc).
What are your thoughts on how company goal statements should be formulated?
(After having met Joe several times - including before “aging” and “longevity” became “popular”, I promise you that Joe and many of his team members understand the aging process more than most of us on this forum and are spending massive amounts of energy on furthering their understanding week in and week out.)
Why so negative about someone that has spent a huge part of his life devoted to the same general objectives that we have here on the forum and is continuing to dedicate himself to the fight for life and vitality?
They may mean well, but this is a clickbaity sort of statement. I does not fit at all with anything like Gompertz and inherently implies they don’t understand aging. However, it is the sort of statement people make for marketing reasons.
Comparing it say to a housebuilder with a target of building 10,000 houses. That is a target that you can work back from to calculate what needs to be done and against which a company can be measured.
10 years of improved health cannot be worked back from and measuring it is really hard and there is no commonly agreed system to measure it. The Gompertz formula itself is non linear.
Thanks for further detail on your thinking here @John_Hemming
I do note that you elsewhere have promoted the XPRIZE healthspan competition and your team’s participation in that - which has a similar, almost identical goal:
I think both of you are correct - its a messaging / marketing approach positioning the company in the public’s mind that they are about “healthy longevity” with moderate goals (in so far as any life extension above diet and exercise is “moderate”).
It also is a way to convey the goals to the company employees… in a world where you can target anything from “don’t die” / infinite life extension to “healthy aging” (without max life extension) they seem to be saying we’re pushing the boundaries of science but not in an Aubrey de Grayian extreme sort of way. In part I see this as a risk/reward trade-off, that likely matches with many investors right now. Most of the money in longevity is going towards these moderate “health lifespan improvement” biotech type goals. It’s a reasonable bet, from the investors standpoint. And pushes the science forward. We’ll see where it goes over the next few years…
Sam Altman’s longevity startup is testing a pill for a younger brain
Retro’s said its first human clinical trial is set to launch by the end of 2025.
It’s for a pill designed to clear out “gunk” in the brain and reverse Alzheimer’s.
I’ve just hopped on a video call with the CEO of Retro Biosciences, the Sam Altman-backed longevity company, when I mention it’s quite hot.
Joe Betts-LaCroix takes my passing comment as a cue to muse on the wonders of air conditioning, and how energy and heat were once synonymous — until they weren’t.
As a multi-hyphenate scientist, entrepreneur, and once-inventor of the world’s smallest computer, Betts-LaCroix is excited by paradigm change.
At the helm of what is essentially Altman’s playground for experimenting with pushing the limits of the human lifespan, Betts-LaCroix is hoping to engineer the same shift that air conditioning brought to hot summer days for your brain and body. Ideally, one day, decouple aging from decline and disease.
Hoping is one thing, delivering is another.
Retro is set to start its first clinical trial since its launch in 2021, with an initial $180 million investment from Altman. Betts-LaCroix told Business Insider that by the end of 2025, Retro will have dosed its first trial patient with an experimental pill called RTR242.
It’s designed to help reverse Alzheimer’s by reviving autophagy. This cellular recycling process in our body — the same one that’s triggered by fasting — often goes haywire in old age, and is widely thought to have broad antiaging effects.
“There are old, misfolded, mutated, broken, undigestible proteins inside cells that build up over time,” Betts-LaCroix said. “The normal cellular recycling system gets messed up.”
Modality / MOA: oral small-molecule inducer of autophagic flux (aims to “revive” impaired autophagy and clear intracellular protein aggregates with age). Specific molecular target not yet disclosed publicly. (Retro Bio)
Lead indication:Alzheimer’s disease (positioned as a disease-focused entry point for a broader aging/autophagy strategy). (Retro Bio)
Stage / near-term plans: company states it is moving toward first-in-human in Australia (Phase 1 safety), with dosing targeted to start by end of 2025. (Business Insider)
Rationale: autophagy declines with age; re-activation could reduce toxic protein “gunk” in neurons, potentially improving cognition vs. amyloid-only approaches. (Business Insider)
iPSC-derived Microglia program (CNS “cell replacement”)
Asset/code:RTR888 (also shown as “iMG”). (Retro Bio)
Modality / product type:iPSC-derived microglial progenitors intended to repopulate the brain with “younger” microglia and reduce neuroinflammation. (Retro Bio)
Proposed use:CNS conditions (company highlights Alzheimer’s and broader neurodegeneration as logical targets). (Retro Bio)
Stage:preclinical (PoC → preclinical on pipeline). (Retro Bio)
Scientific context: multiple groups have demonstrated long-term engraftment/function of hiPSC-derived microglia in rodent models and potential enzyme-delivery benefits in lysosomal diseases—supporting the general feasibility of this modality. (These are context data, not Retro-specific.) (PMC)
Asset/code: frequently referred to as iHSC on the site; BI also mentions RTR890. (Retro Bio)
Modality / product type:patient-specific, iPSC-derived hematopoietic stem cells intended to replace or reset the blood/immune system (bone-marrow failure, leukemias, other hematologic disorders). (Retro Bio)
Key partnership & tech:exclusive license and multi-year collaboration with reNEW/Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (Melbourne) to advance a 2024 “world-first” method to grow human blood stem cells in the lab toward an autologous cell therapy; partnership value up to US$35M; goal of first-in-human within ~5 years. (reNEW)
Stage:preclinical (PoC → preclinical on pipeline). (Retro Bio)
Tissue Reprogramming (in vivo partial reprogramming)
Program scope on site:AAV-delivered reprogramming factors for in vivo rejuvenation, with early disease foci listed as osteoarthritis, age-related hearing loss, and Alzheimer’s disease. (Asset codes not yet shown.) (Retro Bio)
Stage:proof-of-concept / preclinical (no public asset codes or clinical timelines disclosed). (Retro Bio)
What Retro itself highlights as its scientific pillars
iHSC / RTR890 (iPSC-derived HSCs) → blood disorders/immune reset;exclusive license of MCRI/reNEW tech; preclinical, FIH targeted within ~5 years per partner announcement. (reNEW)
AAV reprogramming (no code disclosed) → OA, ARHL, AD (preclinical PoC). (Retro Bio)
