Company
Retro Biosciences
Last updated 2026-05-17· 1 min read
Reviewed by the Ultimate Longevity Bible editorial team. Educational reference — not medical advice. See disclaimer.
What it is
Retro Biosciences was founded in 2021/22 with an initial $180M investment from Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) and an explicit 10-year brief to add 10 healthy years to human lifespan.
Programmes
- Cellular reprogramming — partial Yamanaka-factor approaches to reset cellular age.
- Autophagy enhancement — drug discovery on the autophagic flux pathway.
- Plasma factor discovery — identifying youth-associated proteins in human plasma proteomics, following on from Wyss-Coray-style work.
Notable
- Built in stealth for the first 18 months.
- Concentrated talent including significant overlap with the rejuvenation field’s academic core.
State
Pre-clinical; no public clinical-stage candidates as of writing.
Why it matters
Retro is one of the better-funded private bets that partial reprogramming and related modalities can be translated into therapeutics on a faster timescale than the academic mainstream suggests. The 10-year framing makes it a useful comparator to longer-horizon shops like Altos.
- Life Biosciences — Company.
- NewLimit — Company.
- Turn Biotechnologies — Company.
- Disabled Macroautophagy — Hallmark.
- Loss of Proteostasis — Hallmark.
Related entries
Partial reprogramming, Autophagy machinery, Tony Wyss-Coray.
References
- Retro Biosciences — public company website, 2024.