Alex Trapp from Retro explains how induced pluripotent stem cells work: four proteins can reprogram any cell back to a youthful state, where it can become any cell type. Companies like Retro, NewLimit, and Altos Labs are betting this could enable cell-replacement therapies that add years to human life.
Much, although not all, of Retro's technology revolves around work with something known as an iPSC. We don't love acronyms on this show, but this is one that you need to know because iPSCs are at the heart of a ton of current biotech bets from the likes of Retro, NewLimit, and Altos Labs. To help explain these things, I've recruited Retro's computational biologist, Alex Trapp. He has some sweet computational mutton chops. We give you iPSC 101.
I'm gonna try to explain it, and then Alex, who actually knows things, will fix everything that I get wrong. There are these things called induced pluripotent stem cells. They're always shortened as iPSCs. You can take any cell on your body, a skin cell, heart cell, whatever, Hit it with these 4 proteins, we call them transcription factors, and then what happens?
Uh, it rejuvenates the cell to its youngest possible states and also makes it into a stem cell. And from that stem cell you can generate any other type of cell that you'd like. I think this is going to be critical for any cell replacement therapies and really a big paradigm shift in biology.
