The Silicon Valley runs on only two things:
Anti-aging: The horrible amount of cash and the tales people tell about who they really are. Due to which possibly the bay area has become ground zero for the people who are still practicing one of the oldest methodologies in the human history that is the legend of everlasting life.
Maybe this couldn’t be referred to as the everlasting life exactly, but yes a vastly expanded and an improved life. You may call it a healthspan extension, or a geroprotection: Silicon valley always look for a way for keeping the humans healthier for like a way longer. That was once fringe science and is now becoming the valley’s most fiery topics of investments. Huge thanks to the higher profile endeavors Alphabet’s $1.5 billion bet on the Calico and Bezos.
The maximum amount of excitement around these ventures stays in drugs that they are developing; that are the pills that help in flushing out and preventing the damaged proteins and treatments that would be useful in flushing out the toxic cells. On the other hand, a new company is launching today BioAge; instead of selling a procedure: they are selling a way to predicting fatality. All of these are performed with advanced machine learning programs and a crowd of lab mice, and of course, the blood of 600 and especially the long-lived Estonians.
Aging has never been a disease. It is just the dysfunction of many different organ systems that goes first little by little and ultimately all at once. It should hardly take one molecule for reversing that sput-sput-sputtering out. Where the research of endless life isn’t exactly a higher priority for the federally-funded research- till dating the National Institute of Aging has tested only 30 compounds that are compared to the thousands that are trailed in the cancer research at the National Institute of Aging. A drug has been discovered that is known as rapamycin and has a future in fighting the decline of the immune system. Another drug, Metformin, that is useful in fighting diabetes is still under research and is under trial testing for its anti-aging properties. But the testing long life of drugs obviously takes a long span of time.
So, the BioAge that is based in Berkeley and is run by Stanford bioinformatician, is somehow building a platform that doesn’t require its subjects to actually age with time. Rather, it measures biological age that is done by using the signals floating in a drop of blood. However, Biomarkers isn’t a new concept. Its standard practice is to use the protein signals that guide drug discovery for some health conditions like cancer and the heart diseases. Until now, no one has researched for anti-aging by going outside of the academic research.
Moreover, there are two good reasons for the same one of them is anti-aging products done have a clear path for making some good bucks as the FDA never considers aging under the category of any sorts of diseases. Secondly, the research is really hard. Whoever figures the output first will achieve a serious leg up in the fight to plumb the Valley’s fountain of youth.
Fortney states that “these studies take so long to complete; you have to give drugs to a mouse for four years before you get results,” says BioAge CEO Kristen Fortney, who crossed over into the private sector two years ago from Stanford’s Center on Longevity. Her company launched from stealth with a $10.9 million Series A today, with investments from Andreessen Horowitz and AME Cloud Ventures, run by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. “We’re trying to get that down to just a few months”.