In June 2024, the Aspen Ideas Festival held a three-day health-focused event in which speakers discussed new breakthroughs, policy developments, and possible futures in healthcare. "You Can Live Longer!" was a panel discussion during the festival that consisted of Altos Labs founder and chief scientist Rick Klausner, Cradle CEO and cofounder and venture capitalist Laura Deming, BioAge Labs CEO and cofounder Kristen Fortney, and NPR News Food and Health Correspondent Allison Aubrey discussing developments in the longevity field.

In this episode, Matt and Nick react to the panel discussion and discuss the potential of epigenetic reprogramming for improving organ transplants and reversing organ aging, the limitations of current techniques, the relevance of aging models in disease research, and more.

Check out the links below for further information and/or reading about some of the things we discussed in this podcast episode. Note that we do not necessarily endorse or agree with the content of these readings, but present them as supplementary material that may deepen your understanding of the topic after you listen to our podcast. This list is in no way exhaustive, but it’s a good start!

You Can Live Longer!

The panel discussion that Matt and Nick discuss in this episode took place at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, a gathering of thinkers from different fields in an immersive event exploring new ideas and innovations. The three speakers, each of them leaders in different niches of the longevity space, discuss a wide range of topics, including new drugs in the pipeline that target healthy aging, the manipulability of the cellular aging process, and the functional significance of biological age clocks. They also discuss talent entering the longevity field and difficulties convincing investors to pay attention to aging in years past.

Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Mouse Embryonic and Adult Fibroblast Cultures by Defined Factors

In 2006, Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka published this paper reporting four key transcription factors—Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4—whose overexpression induced mouse fibroblasts to return to their pluripotent, or immature, state. We now refer to these four factors as "Yamanaka factors". Transplanting the pluripotent cells that arose from Yamanaka factor introduction gave rise to certain adverse effects such as tumors.

Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors

This paper, which Takahashi and Yamanaka coauthored along with several collaborators, demonstrated that the four Yamanaka factors described in the previous paper also worked to induce a pluripotent cell state in adult human dermal fibroblasts. The Yamanaka-factor-induced pluripotent cells shared many features with human embryonic stem cells. The authors acknowledged the increased risk of tumor formation as a result of Yamanaka factor reprogramming.

Altos Co-founder and Chief Scientist Rick Klausner teases Yamanaka factors success at Aspen Ideas Health Conference

This article covering the Aspen Ideas Festival panel speculates that Altos Labs, a Jeff Bezos-backed company whose founder and chief scientist is panelist Rick Klausner, has achieved positive results with a "reprogramming cocktail" based on the Yamanaka factors.

When are mice considered old?

Mice are some of the most common animal models researchers use for studying human aging. This short article provides a helpful comparison of mouse and human life phases and aging, and shows that the correlation between mouse and human aging is not linear. It proposes an age at which "old mice" best correlate with "old humans", an important metric to consider in studies of mouse aging aimed at eventual translation to human aging.