I’m Daniel Ives. I was trained as a mitochondrial biologist at the University of Cambridge. I set up ShiftBio in 2017, basically to pursue aging, and I now lead the team at Shift Bioscience as CEO.
What is Shift Bioscience’s mission?
Mission-wise, our new mission statement is that we are using AI-guided cellular rejuvenation to defeat the diseases of aging. This is the only time I’m going to use the term AI, as it’s generally known, but we believe it’s essential for our work.
Why should organizations become Vitalist?
I think organizations should become Vitalist to differentiate themselves as hardcore. There’s a bit of a “Barbenheimer” problem going on—on the one hand, there are people really trying to figure out how to reverse aging, slow aging, and understand what’s going on biologically. On the other side, you have people just saying, “We’ll just sleep more, and you can reverse aging.” I think it’s important to differentiate yourself; otherwise, you don’t know what company you’re keeping.
Are we on track to solve aging in our lifetime?
This is a really good question. Are we on track to solve aging in our lifetime? I think we are, but it’s going to be a gargantuan effort to get there. It will take all of our collective willpower and teamwork to make this happen. I don’t think that people claiming we’ve already solved aging, or that it’s five years away, or that it’s inevitable, are being particularly helpful. It removes the urgency and the need to gear up and do this properly. It’s going to be like climbing Mount Everest, and if people don’t appreciate that, they’re going to give up very easily.
What are the key achievements and future plans of Shift Bioscience?
Shift Bioscience has been going since 2017. We originally focused on mitochondria but actually pivoted the company towards machine learning. We use something called the Epigenetic Aging Clock, which is a robust biomarker created by machine learning. This allowed us to disprove the original hypothesis behind the company, and we embraced machine learning as a way to figure out what’s going on. We did something that might sound relatively boring—we created an aging clock that works in single cells, so we can say with high confidence whether a cell got younger or older. Thanks to an amazing windfall in machine learning, particularly the development of cell simulations, we can now even say whether a simulation got older or younger. This opens up combinatorial space for interventions we can explore. The amazing thing is that it works—we’re finding things that can reverse the age of cells and are much safer, though not fully safe, than the current state of the art. In the last couple of years, we’ve created this clock, started to find new genes, and what we want to do in the next 18 months is find a way to reverse the age of multiple cell types, something that can generalize across the body. Within five years, we aim to get something into clinical trials, and within ten years, we hope to bring something to market.
If you had unlimited resources, what dream project would you embark on?
If I had unlimited resources, I know this sounds cheesy, but I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing now—just without the enormous distraction of fundraising, which is a perpetual thorn in my side. It’s not that I hate fundraising; it’s just that it involves knocking on doors and getting “no” 99 times out of 100. It takes a lot of time, and it would be great not to have that pressure. However, there is a silver lining to fundraising—it acts as a pruning function for your work program. It forces you to prioritize and focus on what’s most important, which is essential because otherwise, you could end up trying to do everything and boiling the ocean. So, as much as I dislike fundraising, it does create a necessary focus.
How long do you want to live?
I’d like to live a long time. It feels a bit arbitrary at the moment—time is going by very quickly, especially when you’re working on aging. Ironically, it’s just so busy. So, I’d like to stick around for as long as I’m happy. It depends on your circumstances, but I’m perfectly happy right now and would like to continue being happy. I don’t want that taken away from me. I think I’m in good company with other Vitalists in that regard.
