Alex Trapp

biologist @retrobio_

[Alex Trapp @AlexandreTrapp]

Last week, on the cover of @NatureAging, we published the first computational framework for epigenetic age estimation at single-cell resolution.

A fantastic collaboration with @CsabaKerepesi and @VadimGladyshev in the @gladyshev_lab @harvardmed!

https://t.co/2QXfmVqXh4

1/🧵

[STAT @statnews]

Retro Biosciences, the longevity startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has raised more money at a $1.8 billion valuation, it announced Friday. https://t.co/t5FPSkow1D

[José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente @ArtirKel]

We raised $$!
https://t.co/G5Y3eXoytx

[ben ray @_benray]

“The logical thing to do is to use conventional equipment in an unconventional way to get to scale, and then start modifying the equipment to increase the rate”

[Alex Trapp @AlexandreTrapp]

@andrewpannu @MichaelRetchin Sleuth

[Samuel Hume @DrSamuelBHume]

Charts of the week

https://t.co/rSht7wnAEZ

[Aging Science News @AgingBiology]

Systemic epigenetic dysregulation as a driver of ageing and a therapeutic target
https://t.co/mwzXkcBy7H

[Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology @NatRevMCB]

New Online! Systemic epigenetic dysregulation as a driver of ageing and a therapeutic target https://t.co/kfDApyZZKS

[Alex Kesin @alexkesin]

I've noticed a lot of renewed interest in drug repurposing lately, so I wrote up one of my favorite examples: the BCG vaccine

Every year, tens of thousands of Americans get a tuberculosis vaccine poured into their bladder to treat cancer -- and it works really well -- and the story of how that became standard medical practice is pretty fun.

[zack chiang @z_chiang]

over time, I've come to the simplified view that much of aging and disease is just cells getting stressed and forgetting who they really are

if we can find ways to make them more resilient or help them find themselves again, we can fix so much

[Alex Trapp @AlexandreTrapp]

@fvderop Kappa

[Daniel Shur @teleodaniel]

Today’s guest on the Free Radicals podcast is @ricomnl, head of applied AI @retrobio_.

Retro was seeded with $180M by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to develop therapies to prevent and reverse age-related disease, and is widely recognized as one of the leading AI for longevity companies.

This was a fun conversation about Retro’s work with OpenAI to engineer 50x more efficient Yamanaka factors in a matter of months, what it means to build foundation models that can reason across natural language and protein sequence, and why the bottlenecks in biology are more experimental than computational. We also get into the biology of aging and how AI can enable therapies that dramatically advance healthy lifespan.

Be sure to follow me and @EricDai_BioE to stay up to date on the latest news in longevity biotech! And Special thank you to @NFX & @omri_drory for lending us their beautiful podcasting studio!

0:00 Intro
1:42 Engineering transcription factors for more efficient reprogramming
19:02 How protein models are used
30:40 Exciting developments in protein engineering
36:20 Challenges in predicting protein behavior
39:38 Do scaling laws apply to protein models?
43:41 How these models are useful for longevity
56:15 Existing pathways for damage repair in the body
1:03:07 Will superintelligence solve aging for us?

[anabology @anabology]

https://t.co/BF5jCmSYJU

hiring!

[zack chiang @z_chiang]

While I can't quite reveal what we're cooking up at Retro just yet, we’re on the hunt for more world-class genomics scientists!

Come help us build technologies that directly measure mechanisms of aging and train models to engineer rejuvenation therapies - posting below

[Alex Trapp @AlexandreTrapp]

@_benray Based

[Alex Trapp @AlexandreTrapp]

@Andrei_Tarkhov The wet-lab pill is strong

[Nature Aging @NatureAging]

🗞️In our January issue, we celebrate the 5th anniversary of Nature Aging 🎉Read one Q&A from aging researchers, another Q&A to peek behind the scenes at the journal, our reflections on the past 5 years, and lots of great science too, here: https://t.co/llGRfRrjsO

[Becoming @becoming_ai]

How do we go from a single cell to a complex organism?

For 50 yrs experimentally meeting the nutritional demands of a growing organism has been a bottleneck in development.

For the first time, we built placental support and predictive tools to make it possible.

Watch ↓

[José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente @ArtirKel]

We're now a clinical stage™ biotech company!
https://t.co/Ejju6YxK14