Life Biosciences: David Sinclair Aims to be a Major Player in the Present Generation of Commercial Longevity Science
This article, unfortunately paywalled, is interesting to note as a mark of the now increasingly energetic expansion of commercial efforts in longevity science. David Sinclair has been building a private equity company to work in many areas relevant to this present generation of commercial longevity science; while I'm not sold on his primary research interests as the basis for meaningful treatments for aging, he is diversifying considerably here, including into senolytics, the clearance of senescent cells demonstrated to produce rejuvenation in animal studies. This sort of approach to business mixes aspects of investing and running a company; it allows a fair degree of flexibility if well run. For someone with comparatively easy access to large amounts of capital, it is a sensible choice. The obvious other example in our field is Juvenescence, Jim Mellon's vehicle. We should expect to see many more entities of this nature arise as the message spreads that the first rejuvenation therapies actually work, and that treating aging as a medical condition is a viable near term goal.
Life Biosciences LLC, the longevity startup founded by Harvard researcher David Sinclair and funded by WeWork's Adam Neumann, is ramping up an expansion of its bid to become the world's largest company dedicated to antiaging drugs. Launched publicly in April, the company has six subsidiaries across four continents. Adding to that, it just acquired Lua Technologies Inc., a health-care communications company, to power Life Biosciences' research collaboration platform. To continue global expansion efforts, Life Biosciences is also looking to raise up to $25 million in new financing, according to a regulatory filing.
Some of the most heavily funded longevity startups like Unity Biotechnology, now public, focus on just one or a few aging-related diseases like osteoarthritis and vision loss. Life Biosciences is aiming for an all-encompassing gambit: to own all the best research, drug-development pipelines, intellectual property, and financing opportunities for the entire sector.
For the past three years, the company has operated quietly amid a surge of activity from other venture-backed longevity startups. In the past year, Life Biosciences' workforce has grown to 90 employees, including the hiring of several veteran pharmaceutical and IT executives into key leadership positions. "Our thesis was to have a land grab of the best people before we let ourselves be known and have competition. We have achieved that now." Life Biosciences has secured several prominent aging and longevity researchers including Dr. Nir Barzilai.
Life Biosciences' portfolio covers a range of longevity research and therapeutics including drugs to target metabolic diseases like diabetes, the use of stem cells to aid in senescent, or so-called "zombie" cell removal, and compounds to prolong life for pets. Two of Life Biosciences' current companies, Senolytic Therapeutics Inc. and Jumpstart Fertility Inc., were acquired at a very early stage while the other four were formed in-house.