[Adobe Stock]
In any event, the potential market size for successful longevity therapeutics is massive. Last year, an IMF report quipped that “Aging is the real population bomb.” WHO notes that the number of people aged 60 and older is expected to double from 1 billion in 2020 to 2.1 billion by 2050 while the number of those aged 80 and up is set to triple between 2020 and 2050, hitting 426 million.
Artem Trotsyuk, Ph.D.
Artem Trotsyuk, Ph.D., an AI Ethics Fellow at Stanford and operating partner at LongeVC, highlights the growing interest in longevity stemming from demographic shifts and increased awareness. As much of the world’s population, particularly the Baby Boomer generation, enters their golden years, they still want to live longer and live healthier. The trend is likely to only build, Trotsyuk said. “We’re seeing good traction there,” he said.
Capitalizing on the longevity opportunity
Venture capital firms such as LongeVC are aiming to capitalize on the evolving understanding of aging. Its website notes that it is investing in “an ageless future.” Other prominent investors include the Longevity Vision Fund, which focuses on later-stage companies leveraging deep science to target longevity pathways, and BlueYard Capital, which backs founders at the earliest stages through its biology arm. Its website teases Spock’s “live long and prosper” blessing as a guiding principle for its longevity investments.
Beyond the venture capital community, governmental initiatives and philanthropic organizations such as the Saudi Arabia–based Hevolution Foundation are also playing a prominent role in advancing longevity research. Overall, the field has attracted the attention of prominent billionaire investors like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, and Larry Page.
LongeVC’s investment focus
Sergey Jakimov
For its part, LongeVC focuses its efforts on three primary areas: therapeutics, early-stage diagnostics, and longevity infrastructure, according to Sergey Jakimov, the firm’s co-founder and managing partner. One notable company in LongeVC’s portfolio is Rubedo Life Sciences, a biopharma that recently secured $40 million in Series A funding. “By addressing the root cause of age-related diseases, Rubedo has found a solid avenue to preserving biological youth,” reads a press release from LongVC.
Rubedo will use its latest funding to progress its lead drug candidate, RLS-1496, into phase 1 clinical trials for the treatment of chronic atopic dermatitis and chronic psoriasis. Rubedo Life Sciences is focused on targeting senescent cells, aging cells associated with a spectrum of age-related conditions.
LongeVC’s portfolio includes a focus on drug discovery and development. One prominent company in LongeVC’s portfolio is Insilico Medicine, an AI-driven drug discovery and development platform firm that has raised more than $400M to date and is among the most visible AI-focused drug discovery firms. In addition to Insilico Medicine and Rubedo Life Sciences, LongeVC has invested in several other companies in this space, such as Turn.bio, PreComb, Freedom Biosciences, Interface Biosciences, Unnatural Products, Helix Nanotechnologies, and CatenaBio.
Jakimov highlights LongeVC’s investment focus: “We do invest quite heavily in longevity-focused biotech. We were early investors in epigenetic reprogramming and now in senescent cells, et cetera. But it’s always backed by a solid therapeutic program and therapeutic pipeline.”
LongeVC’s portfolio also includes diagnostics and testing companies, such as AOA Dx, Melio and SiPhox Health, which are working on early detection and faster diagnosis of conditions like ovarian cancer and newborn infections.
In the personalized health and wellness space, LongeVC has invested in an array of companies with diverse focus areas. Examples include Basepaws, which offers feline DNA testing; Deep Longevity, a biological age tracking SaaS; Marble, focusing on reversing skin aging; Haut.AI, an Estonian-based European generative AI startup focused on beauty and skincare intelligence tools; and Ani Biome, developing personalized microbiome supplements. In addition, the portfolio also includes Longenesis, a software company streamlining clinical trials, and industry support organizations such as First Longevity & Longevity.Technology, the Longevity Science Foundation, and the Longevity Biotech Association.
The long road to life extension
While longevity research is attracting increasing attention and funding, transforming scientific advances into practical clinical interventions continues to pose a formidable obstacle. For example, a 2020 review in Nature notes that interventions that slow aging could prevent or delay the onset of many age-related diseases, but the challenges in translating these findings to human clinical trials remain significant. While therapies such as rapamycin, metformin, and sirtuins have shown effectiveness in animal models, unraveling their impact on human aging remains elusive.
Another challenge is that a lot of longevity technology is “still experiencing an identity crisis when it comes to actually finding these therapeutic indications,” Jakimov said. For instance, the senescent cell space is an example where many companies have demonstrated senescent cell clearance, but few have shown disease-modifying effects or measurable endpoints in human trials. Additional hurdles include the lack of universally accepted biomarkers for aging and the long durations required to demonstrate life-extension benefits in clinical settings. Jakimov highlights the challenges in discussing longevity-focused technologies with regulatory bodies, which currently view these through the lens of traditional disease indications.
This “crisis of identity” underscores the difficulty longevity technologies face in identifying specific disease areas where they can demonstrate measurable clinical impact. Jakimov further explains, “You have a longevity-focused technology, but you don’t have the language to speak to the FDA, because the FDA will look at it from the point of view of disease indication, obviously, not just how fantastic the tech is.”
Overcoming hurdles in longevity biotech and the role of AI
To overcome these hurdles, longevity startups must focus on generating robust preclinical data and actively seek partnerships with established pharma companies while continuing to sharpen their commercialization strategy. “Hype or no hype, we approach every investment the same,” Trotsyuk said. “We want to make sure that if we’re investing in a company, not only does it have solid preclinical data, is able to demonstrate that they actually know what they’re doing, have a good team, but also have some insight into the next steps.”
As the longevity biotech industry continues to evolve, the integration of AI is already significantly accelerating R&D efforts, as a 2023 Frontiers in Aging paper found in 2023, which explained how AI can accelerate the understanding and treatment of aging by identifying lifestyle characteristics that influence how individuals age and by developing drugs to counteract aging and age-related diseases.
Given the explosion of interest in AI, however, it’s worth studying the field with a critical eye. “Every hype cycle brings about hype of certain companies. One of the hype cycles is generative AI right now,” Trotsyuk said. “And with that, you see more companies that are doing GenAI-related topics for different applications, primarily in the space of clinical trial design and parsing through data as well as looking at proteins, drug-protein interactions and different applications for text.”
Trotsyuk also notes the ongoing battle between open-source and closed-source models in AI development: “In terms of actual AI development, I think it’s still too early to say what’s actually going to transpire.”
Ultimately, Trotsyuk, who holds a Ph.D. in bioengineering and AI, emphasizes the importance of understanding the fundamentals of machine learning and AI. This knowledge is crucial for distinguishing between legitimate applications and “snake oil” in the industry. As he puts it, “Once you understand the basics of AI, you can begin to decipher what is snake oil versus what actually makes sense. You start to validate the claims that people are making.” While marketing copy tends to portray AI as a panacea, at its core, machine learning functions as a guessing engine. It calculates the best probability, the best guess for the next word, or the best guess of what the output should be based on the given input. “That’s all it is—a probability engine.”
Filed Under: Drug Discovery, Drug Discovery and Development, Immunology, Infectious Disease
