Age Reversal.
Project Panama.
News Items is “the most valuable newsletter out there.” — Peggy Noonan.
1. MIT Technology Review:
When Elon Musk was at Davos last week, an interviewer asked him if he thought aging could be reversed. Musk said he hasn’t put much time into the problem but suspects it is “very solvable” and that when scientists discover why we age, it’s going to be something “obvious.”
Not long after, the Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair jumped into the conversation on X to strongly agree with the world’s richest man. “Aging has a relatively simple explanation and is apparently reversible,” wrote Sinclair. “Clinical Trials begin shortly.”
“ER-100?” Musk asked.
“Yes” replied Sinclair.
ER-100 turns out to be the code name of a treatment created by Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup that Sinclair cofounded and which he confirmed today has won FDA approval to proceed with the first targeted attempt at age reversal in human volunteers.
The company plans to try to treat eye disease with a radical rejuvenation concept called “reprogramming” that has recently attracted hundreds of millions in investment for Silicon Valley firms like Altos Labs, New Limit, and Retro Biosciences, backed by many of the biggest names in tech.
The technique attempts to restore cells to a healthier state by broadly resetting their epigenetic controls—switches on our genes that determine which are turned on and off. (Source: technologyreview.com)
2. U.S. consumer confidence declined sharply in January, hitting the lowest level since 2014 as Americans grow increasingly concerned about their financial prospects. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index cratered 9.7 points to 84.5 in January, falling below even the lowest readings during the COVID-19 pandemic. A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market tumbled 9.5 points to 65.1, well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. It’s the 12th consecutive month that reading has come in under 80. Consumers’ assessments of their current economic situation slid by 9.9 points to 113.7. (Source: apnews.com)
3. Investors are betting the Trump administration will run the economy “hot” ahead of midterm elections, with buoyant stocks and a weaker dollar reflecting expectations of strong growth and rising inflation. A string of robust economic data has defied predictions of a slowdown in the US, sending credit spreads to the tightest levels of the century and helping stocks hit fresh record highs this month. At the same time, fund managers said there is a growing belief that President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation push and campaign for lower interest rates will add more fuel to the economy this year, as the president seeks to bolster support ahead of November’s congressional polls. “There is a carefully engineered plan to have the US economy humming into the summer,” said Arif Husain, head of global fixed income at T Rowe Price. (Source: ft.com)
