Removing senescent cells; Hunting water vs. Capitalism; Aibo vs. Jibo ;
[Genomics]
Removing senescent cells
is the new frontier of the war on aging. According to this Guardian article, it was in in 2008, Novato, CA-based Buck Institute researcher Judith Campisi discovered secretion from senescent cells causes inflammation, the driver of almost every age-related diseases. This discovery shed light on scientists who believed aging is curable and eventually led many in believing clearing out senescent cells from our body is the new north to get to the root of aging.
(Photo source: Researchgate.com)
Later in 2016, Unity, a Brisbane, CA-based biotech company, then a startup, published its repeated experiments in eliminating senescent cells in aged animals. This paper was said to “the proof concept for the entire industry.”
The capital market has responded to this scientific breakthrough. Unity – backed by Bezos and Thiel – went public in 2018 and was believed the first exit from so-called “longevity startups,” although it raised over $200 million before its $85 million IPO.
Other notable senescence startups include Seattle-based Oisín Biotechnologies , Senolytic Therapeutics in Spain and Cleara in the Netherlands.
Senescence startups have different approaches to remove senescent cells. Unity tries to use “senolytics”, the small molecules, to inhibit the biological pathways senescent cells use to resist normal death of the aging cell. Clera uses an engineered peptide molecule to target a particular subtype of a senescent cell and claims its safer, according to Guardian.
None of these practices went in a clinical trial. It’s also worthy to note that “not everything about senescent cells is bad. The cells and their secretions are believed to be important during the development of embryos”, according to MIT Tech Review and senescent cell also plays a dual role in cancer prevention, according to Frontiers in Oncology (NIH link) . These add more complication to the battle on senescent cells, but the war on aging is surely only accelerating.
[Evolution]
Hunting Water vs. Capitalism
(The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter)
Our bodies are built to run but not to find water. Therefore our need to exchange information about the location of water have evolved us to become more successful than apes. In his book The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter, Harvard Anthropology professor Joseph Henrich, with rich evidence across “archeological, linguistic, genetic, first hand-ethnographic data, behavioral economics, comparative psychology”, articulated how our learned behaviors evolved us biologically without being genetic (reader Simon Lavoie).
Interestingly, Naval Ravikant, founder of Angellist, mentioned a similar viewpoint in his recent podcast, Capitalism/free markets are intrinsic to human species. Ravikant states, “We’re the only animals who cooperate across genetic boundaries,” adding, “… one way we cooperate is by keeping track of credits and debits in voluntary exchanges.”
In short, our journey wiggling along the gene-culture coevolution is best summarized by a quote from Henrich’s book itself: “we stand on the shoulders of a very large pyramid of hobbits.”
[Robot]
Aibo vs. Jibo: inequality at birth redefined
(Aibo is entering the U.S. market)
Jibo, the world’s first family robot who promised us nearly everything, now left us with its last dance.
Aibo, with a hefty price tag at $2,900, announced its envoy to the States and immediately received press attention a niche product can hope for.
Two opposite events occurring at the same time always teaches us something. To a startup founder (who likes to remain anonymous), it’s a new definition of inequality at birth.
No, he is not referring Jibo was born and raised on Indigogo and Aibo was born into the Sony family. In fact, in terms of funding and media coverage, Jibo was an envy to many stealth hardware startups. (Jibo on Time’s cover as “25 best invention of 2017”)
Jibo was raised to be everything: utility, security, companionship…and learned Chinese before it could walk.
Aibo, started with an almost problematic narrative (pet love from a robot?), endured a life-and-death setback, is now making global comeback. All of a sudden, everything it attempted starts to make sense:
“A notable number of customers in Japan were buying Aibo as a companion for their elderly family members. Sony thinks the same could be true in for the US market,” observes Sony President and COO Mike Fasulo.
“More people are living alone. It’s an urban reality”, according to this Pew research.
For young families with kids, just in the Bay Area alone (where one household needs an annual income of $200,000 to live comfortably), many of them are battling to get in line for Uber. Tending a real pet is just unthinkable.
By now, we have learned when Jibo was struggling to ship its first product, the consumer robot world didn’t stand still. Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home have taken the utility-based home robot market by storm, and cheaply. This is the risk of trying to be everything.
Aibo,on the other hand, solely focuses on one thing, but one higher on the pyramid of human needs: companionship. And it didn’t assume the path can be packed into one menu. According to Engadget, by design, it takes about three years for an Aibo to “mature” to its own behavior system, “just like a real dog would”. Not a linear product but that’s precisely what human emotion is: complex.
Aibo didn’t bother to be prematurely popular either. Jibo, who received venture funding from Asia (Acer, Dentsu Ventures, NetPosa (China),KDDI (Japan) and LG Uplus (Korea) ), naturally went to explore the Chinese consumer market even before the first product could be launched. Now, this proved to be a distraction.
The hardware startup founder and I compared the two robot pets’ journey. He (prefers to remain anonymous) reminded me that when we talk about the growing inequality at birth, we mainly compare material means.
“But maybe in the future, new inequality at birth would be gauged at parents’ ability to teach children what not to focus on and when to double down. In other words, the ability to navigate a path to top of the pyramid, rather than handing a golden ladder, will save children many years of learning curves,” he told me.