Martin Jensen: Altos Could Lock In One Approach to Cellular Reprogramming Too Early With $2 Billion
Martin Jensen: Altos Could Lock In One Approach to Cellular Reprogramming Too Early With $2 Billion
On July 27, biotechnology entrepreneur Martin Borch Jensen wrote that Altos Labs' $2 billion could slow the search for cellular reprogramming therapies. His reasoning is that, while researchers are still looking for an effective method, funding should support multiple approaches and allow plans to change in response to experimental results.
In his post, Jensen acknowledges that Altos has substantial funding, Nobel laureates, and strong leadership. In his view, however, an investment of this size forces the company to present a clear plan immediately, even though the path to a therapy still has to be established through experiments.
Cellular reprogramming aims to return an adult cell to a younger state. Researchers do this by briefly activating genes that regulate other genes, or by using chemical compounds. The outcome depends on the tissue, while the delivery method determines where these genes or compounds reach. This is described both in a Nature Communications review and by NewLimit, whose program seeks a distinct combination of factors for each cell type.
In Jensen's model, a large company may select its main hypothesis too early, hire people to pursue it, and build its budgets and reporting processes around it. Later decisions then have to pass through the structure already in place. Choosing the wrong direction becomes more costly, and changing course takes longer.
Jensen proposes giving ten small teams $20 million each, allowing them to test different approaches, and increasing investment after an approach produces a successful result. Under this model, the funding pays not for a single large program, but for independent experiments and the ability to abandon an incorrect hypothesis quickly.
There is a strong objection to this model: a large laboratory can also run several independent programs. In his response about Bell Labs, Jensen distinguishes between a profitable monopoly that could support a small research operation and a biotechnology company that depends on expectations of future returns. His argument is not that size is inherently harmful. It concerns which form of organization preserves the ability to change its hypothesis while experiments are still defining the path to treatment.