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  • We as a species are living longer.

  • Right now, the average American lives for about 80 years.

  • And the question is, how long could we live?

  • We actually don't know the answer to that.

  • This question is at the center

  • of the burgeoning field of longevity science,

  • and biotech startups believe we are closer than ever

  • to unprecedented lifespan.

  • A recent explosion of longevity startups

  • has created a new speculative industry almost overnight.

  • Oxford economics estimated longevity

  • to be worth $7.6 trillion.

  • In order to reach its potential, right,

  • really needs to have a way of getting to the market

  • as fast as we can possibly do it.

  • [Narrator] But some fear whatever breakthrough may happen

  • will never really serve the average person.

  • Rather, it will favor the few who are sinking their fortunes

  • into these startups.

  • It's a pretty concentrated group of investors.

  • From our estimates,

  • it's like nearly 50% has come from individuals.

  • That's a nicer way of saying billionaires.

  • I have to be honest,

  • a large part is egoistic because the billionaires

  • they are getting older and they have a lot of money

  • and they still have a lot of ambitions.

  • They want to live longer when they age better.

  • When people think about longevity,

  • the thing that comes to mind is usually, you know,

  • some eccentric billionaire trying to live forever.

  • But what longevity really is

  • is just the science of helping us live longer.

  • And also the science of helping us live more healthfully.

  • Anything that comes out of this space

  • won't be just for the rich.

  • Humans have been trying to cheat death

  • since we climbed down from the trees.

  • The Fountain of Youth was a mythical place

  • where you could drink waters from its springs

  • to rejuvenate your aging body.

  • It first appeared in writing around the fifth century BC

  • and the search hasn't stopped since.

  • Folklore has it that Spanish Explorer Ponce de Leon searched

  • in vain for magical waters with restorative powers

  • in modern day Florida and The Bahamas.

  • But historians agree that most of his time

  • was actually spent searching

  • for something a bit more earthly.

  • Not only was he searching for gold,

  • but expeditions like his were expensive and in constant need

  • of fundraising from the throne across the Atlantic.

  • Today, the modern quest for prolonged youth

  • remains very expensive.

  • Last year, more than $2 billion in venture funding

  • went into the longevity space.

  • So this is a space that people are excited about

  • and they are putting their money into it.

  • But this expedition is funded mostly

  • by a different sort of royalty.

  • We have heard recently, you know, that famous people,

  • such as Jeff Bezos invested, not only millions,

  • but actually billions into new startup companies.

  • And I think you know,

  • it is totally justified this investment.

  • While this narrative of this super rich

  • making an elixir of life for themselves at the expense

  • of the rest of the world world makes

  • for good Bond villain material,

  • it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.

  • I love it.

  • The narrative about lots of billionaires

  • coming into this longevity space,

  • it's played up more than it needs to be because in general,

  • like VC funds are backed by billionaires

  • or families of billionaires.

  • This is sort of the artery

  • of the the worldwide innovation economy

  • is people who have the capital on hand to be able

  • to do these big, sometimes risky, investments.

  • I don't think that impression is entirely wrong

  • but it's also not fully correct.

  • And it really fails to recognize the ways in which

  • the edges of human knowledge and capacity

  • are always explored on the outskirts

  • by a handful of individuals

  • who are uniquely motivated and uniquely resourced.

  • It never happens with technology that somehow that

  • that then stays secretive

  • and closed up in a box and only effective for them.

  • As it turns out the science of pharmacology

  • and even the basic laws of supply and demand

  • don't really allow for an elite super drug.

  • That first pill that you create or that first injection

  • or whatever it is that might cost, you know,

  • $500 million to make that first pill.

  • The second one probably cost a fraction of a penny.

  • And so if you were to do the math

  • of like the supply and demand aspects of this,

  • it doesn't make sense to make a really expensive medicine

  • that only a few billionaires take

  • when you can make something really cheap

  • but make it for everybody.

  • And there's another reason

  • why private billionaires and VC's are flooding this space.

  • As it turns out, longevity health doesn't exactly fit

  • into the current healthcare model

  • making it risky and more complicated

  • to traditional pharmaceutical investors.

  • The major regulatory bodies that look at states

  • of disease, so the CDC, the FDA,

  • they don't consider death an illness.

  • Of all of the clinical endpoints that we generally look at

  • therapeutics alleviating the suffering of humans,

  • interestingly, death isn't one of them.

  • Many people, very accurately,

  • particularly as we live longer and healthier lives,

  • are pausing and saying, well, wait,

  • why do I wait to get involved

  • with the healthcare system until I'm sick?

  • And why is there no baseline of what being healthy is?

  • There have been a lot of people with resources,

  • i.e. billionaires, who are saying,

  • I know the best practices for living long and healthy lives

  • but what are the treatments to alleviate some

  • of these symptoms of aging?

  • And all the classic investors in the space said,

  • I don't really know how to fathom that.

  • I don't know what to do

  • with these kind of soft clinical endpoints.

  • And I absolutely don't know how to invest on the metric

  • of you make an investment today,

  • you engage with a therapeutic practice,

  • and then hopefully we find out in 50 years

  • that you lived 10 healthier years

  • than you might have otherwise, right?

  • That feedback loop is way too long.

  • And that's really what's enabled investors like ourselves

  • to start participating in this market.

  • What's more, longevity science itself

  • challenges much of the healthcare status quo as we know it.

  • Everyone in the space agrees that for real longevity

  • to be achieved, there needs to be a massive paradigm shift.

  • We are locked into a system where we wait

  • for people to get sick and then try to treat them.

  • And that system worked really well a hundred years ago

  • when infectious diseases

  • were the cause of death for everybody.

  • If you come in with a heart attack

  • or with stage three cancer

  • or with early stage Alzheimer's disease,

  • so much has already broken down in our bodies

  • by the time that that doctor is seeing that patient

  • that it is so complex to imagine how we would fix all

  • of the pieces that have come apart.

  • All of these future technologies, these future medicines,

  • they're built around this idea of prevention.

  • The notion that we could switch from a healthcare system

  • that is primarily reactive, wait for someone to get sick,

  • to one that is more proactive, right?

  • Give someone a drug so that they could then stay healthy.

  • So a more technically accurate term for a longevity drug

  • would be a multi-disease preventative,

  • something that can keep you from getting cancer

  • or Alzheimer's disease or having a heart attack.

  • The amazing potential of this science

  • is that we could have a single drug

  • that makes all of those things happen

  • further in the future than they would otherwise have.

  • As of today, a single longevity drug remains

  • as real as the Fountain of Youth and experts agree

  • that regardless of the technology,

  • longevity is a multi-pronged effort using everything

  • from biomarkers and cellular rejuvenation to gene editing,

  • diet, and exercise.

  • There will likely never be a one-size-fits-all solution.

  • And to accomplish this

  • longevity startups are taking an interdisciplinary approach

  • to the science.

  • Scientists have really started breaking down all

  • of the little things that happen to us as we age.

  • And there are a lot of them,

  • but I like to break them down into three categories.

  • Our top category is stuff that happens

  • at the whole tissue level.

  • We call it like changes in how our tissues are put together.

  • We have stem cells that get exhausted as we age

  • and now they can't make new copies of themselves.

  • And then if you zoom in into the cell,

  • there are changes that happen at the molecular level,

  • specific molecules that can't be broken down

  • by our normal recycling mechanisms that build up

  • little by little as we get older.

  • The business model of these startups

  • largely mirror this diverse approach, casting a wide net

  • across both academic science and pharmacology.

  • It's kind of a new model

  • where you don't focus on one single technology

  • or one single therapeutic area

  • because longevity is a very complex approach

  • where many biological mechanisms

  • are interacted and intertwined.

  • So we'd like to have the scientists interacting

  • with each other

  • even though they have a specific scientific fields.

  • We have like an incubator space.

  • We bring in a cutting-edge science.

  • We collaborate with academic leaders in the field

  • and we bring in scientific entrepreneurs

  • to bring this breakthrough science into our labs

  • here in Zurich.

  • So we have labs and offices

  • and then we have very experienced traditional pharma.

  • People who know how to discover and develop drugs

  • in this completely novel field.

  • Where we find a great scientist

  • who has made a great discovery, bring it into Cambrian,

  • and then use the fact that we have a team of chemists

  • and drug developers and researchers, and you know,

  • people who understand the biotech market and all of this

  • to foster that internally.

  • This aggregation model helps biotechs

  • hedge their bets against an admittedly high-risk venture.

  • Drug development is risky, right?

  • So when you start a drug in clinical trials or human trials,

  • you only have about a one in seven chance of that drug

  • making it all the way through.

  • It's three phases of clinical trials to approval.

  • But if you pull together 20 of these different ideas

  • into one entity and resource them all,

  • then all of a sudden that risk goes up to about a 95% chance

  • that you'll get at least one hit.

  • And so the math of drug development makes a lot more sense

  • as a collective than as individuals.

  • Even with so many bets on the table,

  • there's no guarantee that a breakthrough will happen

  • under their roof.

  • Recently, a study funded through traditional grants

  • out of the Salk Institute successfully extended

  • the lifespan of mice.

  • And while mouse studies are not

  • considered breakthrough discoveries,

  • it has gotten the attention of the scientific community.

  • We developed an approach called partial reprogramming.

  • Basically where we express a set of genes

  • which can actually reprogram the cells

  • without losing their identity.

  • We were able to erase the signs of aging.

  • We were able to extend its life by 30% almost.

  • So basically this kind of demonstrates

  • that partial programming, there is a way to rework some

  • of the aging marks in cells and tissues

  • and which can eventually have a beneficial effect

  • on the whole organism.

  • The partial program approach was even tested in human cells.

  • So we were able to reword, take cells

  • from an aged individual and apply these partial programming

  • and erase these signs of aging in the cells.

  • So the conceptually, it works even in human cells.

  • The keyword here is conceptually.

  • The science is in such early stages

  • and it grows every day.

  • What we have is all of these really interesting data points,

  • right, from human studies from mouse studies

  • but we're many, many years, if not decades away

  • from concrete answers that tell us how

  • these things contribute to how we age.

  • And this speaks to another misconception

  • about longevity.

  • This community as a whole, isn't so much focused

  • on increasing our lifespan as much as they are

  • on improving our quality of life as we age.

  • It's not our aim and I don't think anyone

  • can prevent death, right?

  • Ultimately we will still all die,

  • but our aim is that until we die,

  • that we have the best life that we can have.

  • In the longevity world,

  • almost nobody's talking about lifespan.

  • They're all talking about health span,

  • the amount of time that we spend in good health.

  • And if we prioritize expanding health span,

  • increasing lifespan may be a side effect of that.

We as a species are living longer.

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B1 中級 美國腔

百歲(The $7.6 Trillion Quest for Longer Life)

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    王杰 發佈於 2022 年 05 月 28 日
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