Investments in anti-aging

Investors loved anti-age

Olga Blinova, Invest Foresight

Projects in the field of extending human life (anti-age industry) just 5 years ago, they did not enjoy the attention of investment funds. However, the latest market estimates show a new trend – more and more investors are making a serious bet on them, analysts at CB Insights say in the study "The Future of Aging? Startups and innovations that help you live longer and better." In particular, the interest is fueled by the search for a cure for cancer – most often oncopathology is found in elderly people (the median age is 66 years), which means that it is possible that with an understanding of the mechanisms of development of this disease, people will learn to fight aging. Invest-Foresight talks about the key investment trends presented in the CB Insights report.

Let 's go to growth

In many ways, the growth of interest is facilitated by the increase in the number of clinical trials aimed at combating aging. If in 2012 there were only 73 of them, then by the end of 2017 the figure has almost doubled (a total of 139 studies related to the problem of aging were conducted for a year), and by the end of 2018 the figure will increase to 145. According to CB Insights, in 2018, the industry had the largest volume of investments – market participants were able to attract an amount close to $ 800 million (for comparison, back in 2014, the volume of investments was about $ 100 million). The number of transactions is growing, over the past 6 years, most of them occurred in 2017 (CB Insights counted 25, a year earlier there were 13). Finally, in recent years, the market has become more mature – if in 2013-2015 most of the transactions were at the seed stage and angel investments, then in 2017-2018 the number of Series A rounds increased.

As for the key areas in which anti-age industry participants work around the world, CB Insights identifies five at once. In the first place is the fight against aging with the help of pharmaceuticals. The most popular here are senolytics (drugs that allow you to fight with aged and stopped dividing cells), rapamycin and its analogues (substances that can affect the immune functions of the body), as well as metmorphine (a drug intended for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, however, possibly having the ability to influence the process of oxidation and inflammation, with which link aging). Industry participants are also trying to delay aging with the help of regenerative medicine (they rely on placental preparations), at the expense of specialized dietary supplements (we are talking about forms of vitamin B3), new nutrition schemes based on calorie restriction, and even regular blood transfusions.

Not only investment funds

Interest in the anti-age market has grown so much that investment structures have already appeared in the world and are working hard, which focus exclusively on investments in this industry, the authors of the study note. In particular, we are talking about The Longevity Fund of Laura Deming, the youngest venture investor in the United States. The latter invested in the projects UNITY Biotechnology, Metacrine, ALX Oncology and Precision Biosciences. The fund's investments currently amount to $37 million. Another notable investor is the Kizoo Technology Ventures fund, which has invested in 4 startups since 2013, including AgeX Therapeutics, CellAge, Antaxerene and Elevian. Billionaire Jim Mellon, who has already invested in Juvenescence, Insilico Medicine and AgeX Therapeutics, is also investing in anti-age startups.

Pharmaceutical companies are also investing in the fight against aging, although their experience is still contradictory. For example, GlaxoSmithKline Corporation (GSK) in 2013 was forced to close Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a company specializing in anti-aging (GSK previously paid $727 million for it). The startup was working on a drug based on resveratrol (a substance from the skin of red grapes), but its effectiveness could not be proved.

However, there are also successful investments. In particular, Novartis Corporation has been investigating the effect of an analogue of rapamycin to strengthen the immune system in the elderly since 2014. The increase in resistance to infections was proved during clinical trials in 2018. The biotech giant Celgene participates in the promotion of the Celerity research project dealing with the problem of longevity (emphasis is placed on placental stem cells). Last year, the company received $210 million, including from Celgene.

Google Corporation occupies a separate place in the market. The latter controls the company Calico, which remains the most discussed anti-age startup, writes CB Insights. The company, together with pharmaceutical giant AbbVie, is developing an R&D center focused on the problems of aging and age-related diseases. In the latter, companies have gradually invested more than $1.7 billion. The startup has also signed a partnership agreement with the biotech company C4 Therapeutics – together they are working on a cure for "age-related diseases". Calico studies involving naked digger rats have become the most widely replicated: the aging processes of the latter are extremely slow, they are also resistant to cancer, which may help in the future to find the key to combating these ailments for humans.

Russia on the sidelines

Investors' attention to the anti-age market is understandable, because the number of elderly people in the world has reached unprecedented levels and will continue to increase. It is expected that 13% of the world population will be over 65 years old by 2030, the managing partner of RMI Partners notes Maxim Gorbachev.

Not only investments in the "elixir of immortality" are attractive, but also the search for solutions to improve the quality of life in old age and eliminate health problems, be it senile dementia, Alzheimer's disease or age-related visual impairment (presbyopia). It was the Revision Optics company, in which the RMI fund had previously invested, that was looking for a solution for the treatment of the latter. Another thing is that such investments are associated with risks and are not always successful. For example, a solution for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, despite the multimillion-dollar investments of big pharma, has not yet been found, Maxim Gorbachev clarifies.

Gero CEO is not surprised by the attention to the topic of combating the aging of investors Nikolay Kovtunenko.

"Investing in aging is a trend. We have seen their rapid growth in 2017 and 2018, and there is no reason to expect that it will slow down in the near future. Leading Silicon Valley players such as Venrock, Founders Fund, Arch Venture Partners, and even such large institutional investors as Fidelity are investing in the fight against old age," he clarifies.

In addition, the development of drugs of a new mechanism of action is an extremely expensive and long process, which is rarely carried out with the money of one investor. As a rule, pharmaceutical companies, technology corporations, and investment funds are invested in successful projects of this kind at different stages. For example, funds (for example, Partner Fund Management and Bezos Expeditions), the international biotech company WuXi, and the Mayo clinic invested in one of the leaders of the anti-aging market, Unity, which has already entered the IPO, at the startup stage.

Alas, global trends are bypassing the Russian market. Unfortunately, due to the peculiarities of the investment climate and the state of science, there are still very few companies and investors in the country who publicly declare or finance aging research, explains Nikolay Kovtunenko.

"There are several private, non-public investors, usually from the family office category, who invest in such projects. They mostly choose foreign companies," says Nikolay Kovtunenko.

Among the public players, he names a Russian multimillionaire, co-founder of the Euroset network of cellular communication salons Timur Artemyev, as well as the Bioprocess Capital Partners fund.

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