Organization Description
Altos Labs, Inc. is an American biotechnology research company founded on 19 January 2022.
What are Altos Labs developing?
Altos is developing cellular rejuvenation therapies that may potentially delay or even reverse the human aging process in order to stop age-related diseases. Their technological focus is partial cellular reprogramming, which works by resetting gene expression in aged cells to a more youthful profile, reversing a number of aspects of aging and making old cells function like young cells again. Changes to the structural modifications of genes that regulate their expression, known as epigenetic alterations, are believed to be one of the reasons we age.
You can read more about how the actual technique works by clicking on the topic box below.
Despite the enormous publicity that met their launch, their immense budget, and their high-profile research team, Altos has yet to disclose any specific programs and remains entirely preclinical.
At the July 2024 Aspen Ideas Health conference. Klausner noted that one of the limitations on the organ transplant supply was that kidneys from older people often do not function well, such that young transplantees do not fare as well if given them. Similarly, if old rats are given a transplant from a young versus an old rat, “you see a tremendous difference in overall survival and kidney function. But when we take the old rat organ and we introduce these components that rejuvenate, this reprogramming cocktail, just for 45 minutes they’re exposed to it and then they survive as well if not better than the young organs that are transplanted.”
He also noted that after being given in vivo partial reprogramming, “if you biopsy [old mice’s] skin, it looks like young skin.” “When they cut themselves when they’re six months old, if you go back the next day it’s hard to find it [the injury site]. If I cut myself you can probably find it for the rest of my life – it’ll be a scar. It’s the same thing with mice; you do a punch biopsy and they scar, but in these mice that have been rejuvenated, they completely heal. They still die, even though we keep adding the rejuvenation, but they live about 25% longer. That’s really interesting – it looks like what we’re doing is creating healthspan. The average lifespan does go up, not dramatically, although 25% is pretty dramatic, I think, but no more than that.” “By the end of the summer we’ll know in about a thousand mice really in great detail why they die.” No results from such an experiment have been reported.
However, in August 2025, Altos announced that they had hired Joan Mannick as Chief Medical Officer, leading some to speculate that the company was nearing clinical trials.
Is Altos a Longevity Biotech Company?
Despite the widespread apprehension that they are, Altos Labs has expressly denied being a longevity company. Lifespan News devoted a special episode to probing their reasons for positioning themselves in this way.
The company operates out of the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Some additional work is also being done in Japan.
Who founded Altos Labs?
It was founded by the biologist Richard D.Klausner and Hans Bishop.
Who is investing in Alto Labs?
Some of the money behind Altos Labs comes from Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner along with Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s richest person and the former CEO of Amazon.
Who are the researchers at Altos Labs?
Altos has attracted a number of respected researchers including Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, who demonstrated that partial cellular reprogramming could be done in mice to apparent rejuvenating effect. Steve Horvath is also involved and is best known for his work with epigenetic aging clocks, which correlate with and are sometimes claimed to measure biological age and that researchers hope will correlatae with changes to that age following longevity therapeutics. Shinya Yamanaka, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering work in cellular reprogramming, is also part of the team. The board of directors also boasts Nobelists Jennifer A. Doudna (coinventor of the CRISPR gene editing technology), David Baltimore, and Frances Arnold.
In May 2025, Dorian Therapeutics cofounder and CEO Maddalena Adorno announced that they had been acquired by Altos Labs; no details were included. The acquisition was also announced on their website, which is inactive as of August 2025, as is their LinkedIn page. Dorian was developing “senoblockers,” a new class of therapeutics intended to to neutralize the harmful effects of senescent cells while reactivating stem cells by targeting the epigenetic regulators of both processes.
Team
Steve Horvath, Ph.D.
Altos Labs - Principal Investigator San Diego Institute of Science
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