WASHINGTON: Jeff Bezos is on a mission to conquer ageing and has started a new anti-aging company called Altos Labs, recruiting Hal Barron from GlaxoSmithKline to lead the research.
Reported first by MIT Tech Review, Altos Labs has also received funding from a Russian billionaire named Yuri Milner and his wife Julia. Milner is quite famous for investing in big companies like Twitter, Spotify, Facebook and Airbnb.
It appears that the company is also trying to induct scientists from major universities by offering them high salaries. Bezos is no stranger to similar endeavours. With a net worth of over $200 billion, Jeff Bezos has invested in a series of companies, even others that are trying to solve the problem of mortality.
Science however, still trying to piece together what causes aging and its effects. According to science, reports The Conversation, ageing isn’t just a change in how we feel or look, ageing happens at a cellular level.
Our genetic material changes over time and is said to be causing aging in humans, dividing only twenty times in an elderly person, compared to eighty to ninety times in a newborn. Along with these epigenetic changes, telomeres in human DNA shorten in length every time a cell divides. Immune cells, however, help stop the telomeres from shortening when they multiply.
It is not decisive known what causes aging but it is believed that it could be a side effect of damage built up over time, possibly caused by metabolism or exposure to UV rays. Researchers still don’t know if genes are damaged as a person ages over time.
Aging sends some of the body’s cells to a state called senescence, where the cells stop dividing yet are still alive. These cells begin collecting in the body over time causing beneficial and detrimental effects.
These cells will help secrete chemicals that will help repair tissue damage, but an overtime accumulation of these cells will disrupt the normal structure of organs and tissues. Scientists believe that these cells are the reason for aging and its effects in humans.
