Bezos' $3B bet on the fountain of youth?

With $3 billion in backing since day one, Altos Labs hit the ground running with the largest funding round for a biotech company. Hailed by many as a company looking to use biotechnology to cheat death, and a board backed with Nobel Prize winners, what are Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner-backed Altos Labs actually up to? Altos Labs scientists are investigating how to rejuvenate cells under pressure from stresses including genetic abnormalities, injuries or ageing. But rather than aiming to make us all live forever, Altos is looking for ways to reverse disease, so people can live healthier for longer - a key distinction.

With the first public announcement of Altos Labs, came in a MIT Technology Review article, featuring the headline about living forever, Altos Labs had to clarify that Alto Labs is not an ageing company or a longevity company and its focus is on increasing “healthspan”, and that any extension in longevity would be “an accidental consequence” (Rick Klausner, Chief Scientist and Founder and Hans Bishop, President and Founder). 

Ultimately, the tech that Altos Labs is working on may be able to reverse the damage and dysfunction that accumulate in cells as part of the biological ageing process, which could possibly revert to a younger biological age even if the chronological age continues to increase, with the potential to increase healthspan and lifespan. Not then as sci-fi a claim as some have proposed, but still an ambitious exciting goals, with the fire power to take it on.

In other news

🫀Royal Philips rolls out at-home ECG system for decentralized clinical trials. 

👁 AI can identify heart disease from an eye scan. Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that can analyse eye scans taken during a routine visit to an optician or eye clinic and identify patients at a high risk of a heart attack.

🧴 L’Oréal and Alphabet's Verily Are Working on Extremely Personal Skincare. The two companies will work together and with dermatologists to launch a platform to study skin biology. Eventually, that research could lead to the development of skincare products that would help people deal with skin issues, or even prevent them entirely.

🦠 Moderna starts trial of an omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine. The report comes a few days after Pfizer / BioNTech launched a trial of its shot targeting the fast-spreading variant.

🧠 Elon Musk’s Neuralink is hiring a clinical trial director. Since launching publicly in 2017, Neuralink has demoed its brain implant in pigs and monkeys but has yet to announce a start to the long-promised trials in humans. The company’s implant is a coin-like device with electrodes studded on thin, flexible wires. The wires are its main innovation over older brain-machine interfaces, which use stiffer needles that can damage cells in the brain.

Latest healthtech and biotech deals

The largest from last week:

🇺🇸 Altos Labs dedicated to unraveling the deep biology of cellular rejuvenation programming, raised $3B.

🇺🇸 Metagenomi raised $175M that will enable it to advance its lead in vivo and ex vivo gene editing therapy programs into the clinic. 

🇳🇱 Leyden Lab, developing a pipeline of mucosal protection products, raised $140M in Series B.

🇬🇧 ONI, manufacturer of the next generation of super-resolution microscopes, raised $75M in Series B.

🇨🇦 BenchSci raised $63M in Series C to grow AI-powered R&D platform. 

Other notable deals from around the globe:

🇫🇷 Wandercraft, exoskeleton developer Wandercraft raised $45M in Series C.

🇫🇷 Resilience raised $45M in Series A to improve the treatment journey in cancer care. 

🇵🇱 Infermedica, AI-powered platform for symptom analysis and patient triage, raised $30M in Series B. 

🇫🇷 Doctrio, platform helping health professionals improve their knowledge throughout their career, raised €3M in Seed.

Read up on all the latest health deals in Dealroom.co

Tip of the week

We've added a new tab on company profiles to show details of the patents that the company has received. You can filter for this data in the Advanced Filters > Patents tab. For instance, CRISPR Therapeutics has a patent in “Universal Donor Cells”, an in vitro method for generating a universal donor cell. 

Job opportunities

BioNTech is hiring for 271 positions in Mainz, Berlin, Cambridge, and more.

Ada Health is hiring for 73 positions for Director of Product, Senior Business Analyst, Medical Knowledge Physician, and more. 

COMPASS Pathways is hiring for 13 positions in London.

Discover 125K jobs openings at healthtech and biotech startups. (login for full results)

Dive in

🎟️ With Emerge Global Health Innovation conference coming up in March, grab your tickets now, and dive into our joint report on Health & Biotech in the meantime

🎓 Healthtech & Biotech university spinouts

🗺️ Healthtech investment heatmap

🦄 New Healthtech and Biotech unicorns announced in 2021 alone.

Knowledge partners

Laura Rodriguez

Healthtech Specialist
Dealroom.co

Not a subscriber yet? 

This is Dealroom's weekly health newsletter.  Get more industry-specific intelligence on the evolving world of healthtech and biotech, emerging trends, and game-changing startups. Delivered on Thursdays.