Biotechnology
Cellular rejuvenation, gene therapies and the experiments trying to repair what ages inside us.
We follow what has reached human trials, track the results and separate plausible medicine from a beautifully marketed promise.READING ROUTE
THE DOSSIER
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01OPENDeepMind promises to cure everything in 10 years, and Spain's bioinformatics pioneer isn't buying it
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center's life sciences director tests Demis Hassabis's boldest promise against what medical AI can do today.
02OPENChatGPT Health wants to remember your body: what it does with your records and when it will reach Europe
OpenAI connects medical records, Apple Health and wearables to explain changes and prepare appointments. Its greatest advantage is not starting from scratch. The harder decision is how much information we want to hand over.
03OPENHow to calculate your biological age, and whether the tests actually work
Epigenetic clocks read chemical marks on DNA to estimate how you are ageing. The result can be informative, but it is not a diagnosis.
04OPENThe zombie cells ageing your body, and why clearing them could change medicine
Senolytics have extended the lives of mice by clearing senescent cells. Human trials are only now beginning to test their promise.
05OPENWhat is a human digital twin? Testing a treatment on your virtual copy before trying it on you
It is not an avatar or a second consciousness. It is a computer model built from your scans, tests and medical data to predict how your body might respond.
06OPENWhat are stem cells: the body's blank spare part that is already freeing diabetics from insulin
They are the cells the body uses to build every other cell, and medicine is finally turning them into real treatments, from type 1 diabetes to Parkinson's.
07OPENWhat is epigenetics, the layer that decides which genes switch on without changing your DNA
You carry the same DNA in every cell, yet a neuron looks nothing like a skin cell. Epigenetics is why, and the best part is that your diet, your stress or tobacco can rewrite its instructions without touching a single letter of the genome.
08OPENWhat is CRISPR, the molecular scissors that cut and paste DNA to order
The tool that turned biology upside down was born by copying a trick bacteria have used for millions of years to fend off viruses. Today it already cures diseases that once had no fix, and its story won two researchers a Nobel in 2020.
09OPENWhat are telomeres, the hourglass inside you that explains why you age
Your chromosomes carry caps that protect them just like the plastic tip protects your shoelace. Every time a cell divides, those caps get a little shorter, and when they wear out, the cell retires. There lies one of the great keys to aging.
10OPENWhy we age: the hallmarks of cellular aging explained without the lab coat
Aging isn't a battery running out: it's a list of breakdowns piling up inside your cells, from cables fraying to power plants failing. Understanding those pillars is understanding why science believes, for the first time, they can be repaired.
11OPENHow artificial intelligence is accelerating cellular rejuvenation
In August 2025 an OpenAI model redesigned two of the factors that reprogram a cell. AlphaFold already predicts the shape of almost any protein, and there are AI-designed drugs in human trials. That is why the race to rejuvenate lives in our artificial intelligence section.
12OPENThe billionaires funding the war on death, from Bezos's $3 billion to Altman's lab
Jeff Bezos has put some $3 billion into Altos Labs, Sam Altman funds Retro Biosciences and Google has been at it since 2013 with Calico. The planet's richest men have decided ageing is an engineering problem, and they're spending fortunes to solve it before it catches up with them.
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