Amazon founder Jeff Bezos invested $3 billion in Altos Labs. This biotech firm focuses on restoring cell health and resilience of cells to various diseases and injuries.
The Sunday Times notes that the Altos Institute of Science will pursue scientific questions, whereas the Altos Institute of Medicine will develop transformative medicines. Altos Labs will be initially based in the US in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, and in the UK in Cambridge, with additional significant collaborations in Japan.
The startup has enlisted multiple Nobel Prize laureates to serve as board directors. The list includes Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her role in developing the gene-editing tool, and Frances Arnold, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on enzymes engineering. The board is co-chaired by Rick Klausner and Hans Bishop. Hal Barron, chief scientific officer and president of research and development at the British pharmaceutical company GSK, will also become part of the team from August 1. The company was reportedly offering specialists salaries of around $1 million.
In September, Business Insider reported that the company had claimed Jeff Bezos as one of its investors. However, there was no information about the investment and the exact amount.
According to MIT Tech Review, Altos is pursuing biological reprogramming technology. It works by adding proteins to a cell, which essentially instructs it to revert to a stem cell-like state.
