Get Rich or Live Forever Trying: 3 Hot Longevity Startups Selling Health and Hope

How Retro Biosciences, NewLimit, and Insilico Medicine are using novel techniques, from AI to cellular reprogramming, to unlock longer, healthier lifespans.

BY MELISSA ANGELL, SENIOR STAFF WRITER @MELISSKAWRITES

“How old would you like to be when you die?” That’s the question my primary care physician asked during my routine physical. It’s a complex question, one without a right answer. As long as possible, is what some people might automatically think. But most people would rather live a healthy and active 75 years rather than a 90-year lifespan punctuated with excruciating chronic pain and severe illness.

Joe Betts‑LaCroix, CEO and co‑founder of Retro Biosciences, has spent the last decade asking the same question. While working at the Health Extension Foundation, a non-profit that invests in biomedical research, Betts‑LaCroix and his colleagues, with the help of a professional survey firm, canvassed thousands of people to ask how many years they wanted to live. 

They split respondents into two groups: The first was asked to name an age, with no additional context, and most of these answers clustered in the 80s. The second group was asked a different version of the question: how long would you want to live if you could feel as healthy as you did in your twenties, indefinitely? Many respondents said 150. Some checked the survey’s “forever” box.

Faced with the shift in questioning, “the psychology completely transformed,” Betts‑LaCroix says. “People suddenly realized, wait, health really matters.”

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