Everyone’s favourite billionaire supervillain has embarked on his next comically evil scheme: investing heavily in an “age reversal” company that hopes to use biological reprogramming to forcibly prolong human life.
The penis-rocket launcher joins fellow billionaire Yuri Milner as a key investor in the startup, Altos Labs, which has raised £231m to develop technology that can rejuvenate cells some scientists believe could be used to revitalise entire animal bodies.
Shinya Yamanaka, the man who won a Nobel Prize in 2012 for discovering the biological reprogramming process, will act as a senior scientist for the firm, as well as chairing its scientific advisory board. Yamanaka found that by adding just four proteins, cells can be instructed to revert to a state with the properties of embryonic stem cells.
Spanish scientist Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, also reportedly joining the venture, has called reprogramming a potential “elixir of life” that could extend human lifespans by up to 50 years.
Izpisua Belmonte’s research applying the process to mice showed promising results. Some mice showed signs of their tissue becoming younger, but others developed embryonic tumours which can become cancerous (maybe Bezos won’t live forever).
Researchers will reportedly be paid million-dollar salaries at Altos to work on the project, although it is likely the technique will still be too dangerous to try on humans for many years.