The longevity biotech industry revolves around the goal of extending the healthy human lifespan. In recent years, rapid expansion in efforts toward developing medicines that target the root cause of disease, aging, has made this type of biotechnology a very popular focus for many companies, spawning numerous anti-aging biotech startups around the world.
A key technology used in the development of anti-aging therapies is epigenetic reprogramming, which involves the identification of specific sets of transcription factors that can induce changes in gene expression and cell behavior, effectively reversing or correcting epigenetic markers associated with aging, potentially rejuvenating cells and tissues and slowing or reversing the effects of aging and even age-related diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders.
The technology has been tested in animal models and there is evidence that it works, attracting significant investment into startups aiming to rejuvenate humans. Here, in alphabetical order, we profile eight anti-aging biotech companies on a mission to extend lifespan and make age-related diseases a thing of the past.
Altos Lab
Despite being a startup, Altos Labs has already garnered a lot of attention since it was founded last year with $3 billion in capital. One of its main investors is reportedly Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company says its mission is to restore cellular health and resilience through cellular rejuvenation programming, reversing illnesses, injuries and disabilities that may occur throughout life.
The anti-aging biotech company is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, USA, Cambridge, UK, with important collaborations in Japan. The company’s activities are organized across the Altos Scientific Institute, which pursues deep scientific questions and integrates its discoveries into one collaborative research effort, and the Altos Medical Institute, which gathers knowledge about cellular health and programming to develop innovative medicines.
Altos’ immediate focus is on funding scientists and researchers to properly understand rejuvenation — for example, how to tweak the reprogramming to see if it’s possible to rejuvenate animals without killing them, and whether the process can be carried out using regular drugs rather than genetic engineering.
Clock.Bio
Based in Cambridge, UK, clock.bio is an anti-aging biotech startup developing novel regenerative medicines that harness the natural capabilities of human pluripotent stem cells to prevent and treat age-related diseases. Founded by Mark Cotter, who is also the founder and CEO of synthetic biology company bit.bio, the company emerged from stealth last month after raising $4 million in funding and achieving proof of concept. Its immediate goal is to decipher all rejuvenation programs present in human cells and build an atlas of diseases and rejuvenation targets for clinical application.
In fact, this anti-aging biotech plans to decipher the biology of human rejuvenation across the entire genome within 12 months and has already developed an aging model in which human induced pluripotent stem cells are forced to age and activate their self-rejuvenation mechanisms. Unbiased CRISPR screening of large samples of these cells will allow them to identify candidate genes causally related to cellular rejuvenation.
clock.bio’s strategy includes unique aging interventions in induced pluripotent stem cells, unbiased screening of rejuvenation biology, identification and validation of rejuvenation targets, prioritization and translation of therapeutic leads into clinical applications.
Genflow Biosciences
UK-based Genflow Biosciences seeks to halt or slow the aging process in both humans and dogs by using gene therapy to reduce or delay the onset of age-related diseases. The company believes that by treating aging, it could contribute to reducing healthcare costs and the emotional and social burdens that come with ageing.
The anti-aging biotech startup already has a lead compound, GF-1002, which is an adeno-associated viral vector-based (AAV-based) gene therapy suspension for intravenous infusion. The company’s approach is to use AAV vectors to deliver copies of the Sirtuin 6 (SIRT6) gene mutation found in centenarians to cells. Sirtuins are a group of proteins that play a key role in regulating a variety of cellular processes, and SIRT6 has attracted particular attention for its potential role in promoting healthy aging.
Additionally, Genflow’s product pipeline also includes other innovative interventions in gene delivery: GF-3001, which delivers SIRT6 locally to the skin, targeting Werner’s syndrome in humans, and GF-4001, aimed at an important anti-aging treatment in dogs.
Life Biosciences
Life Biosciences cites aging as the greatest risk factor for most chronic diseases and targets aging biology in the development of innovative therapeutics, pursuing a platform approach with two core platforms to ultimately develop therapies that can prevent, treat and/or reverse multiple aging-related diseases.
The company’s epigenetic reprogramming platform is being used in preclinical studies for ophthalmic indications to reprogram the epigenome of older animals to resemble that of younger animals through the expression of three Yamanaka factors, a group of protein transcription factors that play a key role in creating induced pluripotent stem cells and control how DNA is copied for translation into other proteins.
Meanwhile, another platform in life biosciences is called the chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) platform. CMA is a process that breaks down unnecessary proteins in cells. With age, the expression of a protein called LAMP2A decreases, which reduces the activity of CMA, leading to the accumulation of insoluble protein aggregates that inhibit cellular function.
Anti-aging biotech has identified novel small molecule oral compounds that increase the expression of multiple proteins in the CMA pathway, including LAMP2A, meaning they also increase CMA activity. These CMA-activating compounds have demonstrated efficacy in preclinical models of age-related diseases, including frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and retinal degeneration.
New Restrictions
New Limit, which recently raised $40 million in a Series A funding round, is another anti-aging biotech startup aiming to develop epigenetic reprogramming therapies to treat age-related diseases with high unmet need.
To reverse cellular aging in this way, the company wants to use new epigenetic tools to reprogram cells so they become younger, initially focusing on T cells. To achieve this, the company is leveraging major advances in single-cell genomics, epigenetic editing, and machine learning, which it says will help it overcome traditional obstacles to epigenetic reprogramming. One of the main challenges for the company is finding a way to reduce the difference in functional performance between actual young cells and reprogrammed older cells.
New Limit was co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and aims to maintain a small team whose members all actively contribute to both scientific research and the company’s growth.
Rejuvenation Bio
Rejuvenate Bio, a San Diego-based anti-aging biotech startup, aims to unlock the power of gene expression and epigenetic reprogramming to reverse existing cardiac, metabolic and kidney failure in humans. The company’s approach takes gene therapy to the realm of monogenic diseases, with the potential to have a major impact on age-related chronic diseases that account for the majority of healthcare costs.
Earlier this year, the company announced that it had successfully used its reprogramming technology to rejuvenate and extend the lifespan of aging mice. To achieve this, the company used gene therapy to inject three powerful reprogramming genes into the bodies of mice that are equivalent to a human age of 77 years. According to the company, after the treatment, the mice’s life expectancy doubled, with treated mice surviving an average of 18 weeks, while the control group died within nine weeks. This means that the treated mice lived about 7% longer.
The company is also conducting gene therapy trials for mitral valve disease in dogs, aiming to develop new cardioprotective gene therapies to halt the progression of heart failure.
Retrobioscience
RetroBioscience is initially focusing on cell reprogramming, autophagy and the use of plasma-inspired therapeutics in its ambitious attempt to extend the human lifespan by 10 years, ultimately hoping to devise treatments that can prevent multiple diseases.
The anti-aging biotech startup says its autophagy program will have a molecule ready for clinic next year, while its plasma program is characterizing and optimizing plasma interventions in both preclinical and clinical settings, with the first candidates expected to be announced in two years. Meanwhile, its cell reprogramming efforts are closest to basic research and furthest upstream of the mechanisms of aging, and are on track to working towards clinical proof of concept over the next four years.
The company emerged from stealth mode in mid-2022, securing a $180 million investment from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to move towards an initial proof of concept and allow the company to operate securely for 10 years.
Rubedo Life Sciences
Rubedo Life Sciences, a company dedicated to discovering and developing medicines to keep people biologically youthful, is using its drug discovery platform to identify specific drug targets to develop therapeutics that selectively target pathological cells (such as senescent cells) that drive the aging process.
The platform, called Alembic, is an AI-driven drug discovery platform based on the synergy of advanced computational algorithms and chemistry, leveraging single-cell RNA-seq and other omics data to identify druggable targets and pathological senescent cells specific to specific cell populations that emerge in age-related diseases.
The company is planning a pipeline of drug candidates for diseases such as chronic age-related dermatitis, respiratory diseases, liver and kidney diseases, etc. A few months ago, the company announced that it had optioned its first development candidate, called RLS-1496, for the treatment of a skin disease.
Anti-Aging Biotechnology Market: Future Outlook
Anti-aging biotech startups seem to be all the rage right now. The longevity industry is getting an influx of capital from investors, including some big names like the aforementioned Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who are presumably hoping to extend their own lifespans by investing in this kind of research. After all, millionaires and billionaires wanting to live forever is not an uncommon concept in science fiction, and now in reality.
But despite a growing number of companies focusing on anti-aging therapies, epigenetic reprogramming is still in the trial and error stage, and the science is still in its infancy and limited to animal models. However, with a number of anti-aging startups now focusing on research in this field, we may see epigenetic reprogramming being tested in clinical trials within the next decade.
