Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, director at Altos Labs

Who we're talking about: Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte. In 2018, Belmonte was named one of Time Magazine's 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare. Today, he is the Director at the San Diego Institute of Science at Altos Labs, the extremely well funded, secretive biotech company.

So what's the news: Past Friday, Belmonte gave a presentation at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The presentation drew such an audience that police had to be called in to clear the room. From an article in MIT Technology Review:

"The brouhaha shows how excitement is building as researchers uncover the secrets of life and some, like Belmonte, claim they will eventually use molecular technology to radically extend it, by 40 years or more, he has said."

The back story on Altos Labs, where Belmonte works: Altos is a new and mysterious Silicon Valley company that is dedicated to anti-aging research. The company already has $3 billion in funding from wealthy investors such as Yuri Milner and, reputedly, Jeff Bezos.

Altos Labs has three institutes — in the UK, in San Diego, and in San Francisco. It pays its top staff a salary of a million dollars or more, and doubles what junior scientists could earn elsewhere. According to Belmonte, this kind of environment is producing real results:

1. Epigenetic reprograming to make mice resistant to normally fatal poisoning

2. Epigenetic reprogramming to prevent mice from putting on fat

3. A different type of gene therapy to regrow cartilage in mice

So what's next: It's back to the lab for Belmonte. While the working environment at Altos Labs is nice, there is pressure to take promising initial results and turn them into real treatments, fast.

The demand is clearly there. In the words of the organizer of that overcrowded Boston meeting, "It’s a good sign for this field that there is so much interest. It’s a hot topic. Hotter than we expected."