New Longevity Focused Venture Funds Continue to Emerge

This article considers one newer venture fund that is focused on the growing longevity industry. It is far from the only such recently created fund; one might consider SP8CEVC and Longevitytech.fund as other examples. There are more. Biotech startups attempting to address mechanisms of aging are launched at a faster rate these days, and an increasing amount of capital is coming into the space. These are still the early years for this industry, but the trend is apparent. The thesis that one can intervene in the aging process to productively slow or reverse aging is going to be solidly tested in practice in the years ahead.

Not long after Deep Longevity, Inc was acquired by Regent Pacific, funding details have been revealed. First early-stage investment fund LongeVC is using this latest exit to create its first early-stage investment fund, which will be focused on biotech and Longevity opportunities. Deep Longevity closed a Series A funding round at the end of June 2020. LongeVC was joined in the round by some of the most worldwide well-known venture capitalists specialising in biotechnology, Longevity and AI, including ETP Ventures, Human Longevity and Performance Impact Venture Fund (the corporate venture arm of Human Longevity, Inc.), BOLD Capital Partners, Longevity Vision Fund, Oculus co-founder Michael Antonov, as well as other AI and biotechnology investors.

LongeVC is an investment group, specialising in curating, facilitating and executing early-stage venture investments in the fields of biotech and Longevity. Its current investment portfolio includes Insilico Medicine, a global leader in AI-driven drug discovery and Longenesis, an end-to-end collaborative biotech research enabler, as well as other biotech industry-specific companies.

Addressing the Regent Pacific acquisition of Deep Longevity and his fund's exit, LongeVC Partner Sergey Jakimov told us: "Our team welcomes this acquisition and is proud to have participated in one of the testimonies to the enormous future potential that the longevity industry has to offer. It is a unique deal for the Baltic area, and we are determined to use our expertise to screen and invest in similar deals globally." Currently the new fund LongeVC is being set up, with the total amount of the money available from the fund estimated to be $35m. "We are targeting seed-stage and pre-A funding round companies as there are limited opportunities worldwide to get investments at these stages."

Link: https://www.longevity.technology/longevc-launches-new-35m-longevity-investment-fund/

Comments

Well I think a senolytic therapy has to come through stage 1 clinical trials with a decent indication of effectiveness as well as safety to really fire things up. With hindsight, I wish Unity had gone for a protac senolytic, and had gone for a whole body approach, perhaps with an additional injection into the knee. And I wish they'd aimed to measure some objective secondary endpoints such as p16 positive cells in a skin biopsy (although I understand that the FDA demand, reasonably, endpoints that affect actual disease such as pain perception).

Which company will be the first to show effectiveness at removing any sort of damage in a larger stage 1 or stage 1b trial?

Posted by: jimofoz at November 13th, 2020 5:39 AM

I'll be more excited when I see some real VCs get into the sector

I don't recognize most of these people and few have done multi-figure biotech exits

And please stop pumping Deep Longevity and Regent Pacific - that's was just Jim Mellon's reverse shell into a Hong Kong penny stock - very week for a billionaire - he should be doing real IPOs at this point

Posted by: devon mcradle at November 13th, 2020 12:35 PM

FWIW, I am invested in the Principal Healthcare Innovators ETF, symbol BTEC. They curate small publicly traded Bitotech startups. I can buy/sell it through my Brokerage account and it is a marginable stock.

Posted by: JohnD at November 13th, 2020 8:17 PM

Devon,

Regent Pacific is not a shell as you need to have a clinical asset to be listed in Hong Kong where the listing requirements are very tough. The product they have is in phase 3 and at revenue.

Deep Longevity is probably the only blue-chip in biomarkers of aging with Human Longevity as investor and partner, a dozen papers, and granted patents.

Posted by: Natalie at November 16th, 2020 8:41 AM

@Natalie

A Phase 3 asset with only a US$36 Million company valuation ???

Something does not compute...

Posted by: devon mcradle at November 16th, 2020 10:32 AM

@Natalie

A spray on lidocaine / prilocaine formulation for premature ejaculation??

https://www.drugs.com/uk/fortacin.html

That is one hell of an impressive longevity drug I must say...

Posted by: James Burnbrae at November 17th, 2020 11:58 AM
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