Six Startups Changing The Way We Age

Longevity is finally being taken seriously in biotech. Money has been pouring into the sector, with about $4.8 billion invested in the emerging space since 2021, according to PitchBook.

The majority of that came from just one biotech: Altos Labs. Below, BioSpace takes a look at that company and other promising longevity biotechs working to extend the human life span.

To compile this list, we spoke to experts and consulted PitchBook to find biotechs with strong investor support that are working on compelling pathways and mechanisms or are advancing decisively through the clinic.

Arguably the most well-known player in the longevity space is California-based Altos Labs, which is looking for ways to restore cells to their resilient states, making them resistant to external stressors—an ability that according to the company’s website “diminishes with aging.”

This approach to aging hinges on research from Kyoto University professor Shinya Yamanaka that gave rise to induced pluripotent stem cells. Years later, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, adjunct professor at UC San Diego, built on these findings and showed that stem cells can be partially reverted—returning to a state of resilience while also retaining their identity.

Both Belmonte and Yamanaka are affiliated with Altos, the former as founding scientist and senior vice president and the latter as senior scientific officer.

Altos is supplementing its stem cell expertise with generative machine learning and advanced computational capabilities to “unravel the language of cell health, organ health and the complex relationship between them,” according to its website.

Altos’ approach, though compelling and unique, still has a lot to prove. Much of the biotech’s science is currently built on preclinical findings. In September 2024, for instance, Belmonte and a team of researchers published a paper in Science Translational Medicine demonstrating that partial cell reprogramming can prolong life span and improve health in mouse models—though it also increases the risk of developing tumors. Altos has yet to name candidates.

Despite being very young, Altos is “perhaps the most famous in the space,” Williamson told BioSpace, attributing its popularity to the company’s “significant financing, broad charter and ability to attract leading academics.” When it launched in January 2022, the biotech had $3 billion in starting capital—money that has gone toward not just beefing up its platform, but also dealmaking. In May, Altos acquired cell aging-focused Dorian Therapeutics for an undisclosed amount.

Aside from Yamanaka and Belmonte, Altos’ star-studded masthead also includes Peter Walter, head of the biotech’s Bay Area Institute, and CEO Hal Baron, who was previously GSK’s chief scientific officer. Big names likewise populate its Board of Directors, including ARCH Venture Partners’ co-founder Robert Nelsen and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna.

Alongside Altos, BioAge is possibly one of the best-known and deeply backed biotechs in the longevity space.

In February 2024, the California startup closed an oversubscribed series D financing, counting $170 million in earnings. The round was led by Sofinnova Investments, with Lilly Ventures, Amgen Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz participating. BioAge also previously raised $90 million during a series C push in December 2020.

Then, in October 2024, the biotech took the leap to Nasdaq, raising $238 million in an upsized initial public offering. Aside from Lilly and Amgen, BioAgehas also attracted the attention—and money—of Novartis, which in December 2024 paid $20 million upfront and promised up to $530 million in milestones to partner with the biotech on novel therapies for “diseases related to aging” and those which “mediate the beneficial effects of physical exercise.”

The excitement over BioAge is due toits drug discovery platform, which is built from longitudinal human data and has helped illuminate novel longevity pathways with the potential to improve health outcomes. Through specifically developed AI models applied to human aging cohorts, BioAge’s engine takes an “unbiased” and “data-first approach to metabolic aging,” according to its website.

Crucial to BioAge’s approach is its proprietary and exclusive human longevity datasets, which include aging cohorts followed for up to 50 years and which the company bolsters with detailed health records and other measurements.

Despite its promising technology and impressive roster of backers, the last few months have been rough for BioAge. In December 2024, just days before inking the Novartis partnership, the biotech discontinued the Phase II STRIDES trial of obesity candidate azelaprag after 11 patients developed liver transaminitis after treatment. In January, BioAge completely abandoned azelaprag.

Since going public, BioAge’s shares have cratered nearly 80%.

Based in Utah, Halia Therapeutics is targeting what CEO Dave Bearss calls “inflammaging”—chronic, low-grade inflammation that underpins many of the physiological hallmarks of aging, such as the loss of stem cells, protein imbalance and the build-up of old, damaged and dysfunctional cells.

Inflammaging, Bearss explained in an email, is “one of the most tractable and universal mechanisms driving age-related decline.” Halia’s work is focused on blocking the interaction between NEK7 and NLRP3, a key event in the inflammatory cascade. This approach, in turn, “aims to reduce systemic inflammation, preserve tissue homeostasis, and extend healthspan across multiple organ systems.”

Bearss calls this approach to aging drug development a “mechanism-first but disease-informed strategy,” noting that while its drug development process is guided by the underlying biological pathways of aging, “we test it in conditions like MDS [myelodysplastic syndromes], neurodegeneration and obesity-related disease.”

Halia is already in the clinic; the most mature asset, HT-6184, is in Phase II development for lower-risk MDS. According to Bearss, this molecule has demonstrated “early efficacy” in a mid-stage trial, eliciting “hematologic improvement and quality-of-life gains.” The study completed enrollment last month and is expected to deliver initial data in the third quarter.

The company is also planning to assess HT-6184 in combination with Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide to evaluate the links between inflammation and metabolic dysfunction. The study is set to launch this year, Bearss said. Halia has also started exploring another pathway, LRRK2, a protein active in the brain that has been linked to neurodegeneration.

So far, PitchBook data show that Halia has raised $56.3 million since its founding in 2017—including a $30 million series C haul in early 2024. Todd Pedersen, an investor who is currently the CEO of Vivint Smart Home, is among Halia’s backers. In March, the company also won a LabCentral Golden Ticket—which gives the startup access to the lab’s facilities and services—sponsored by Novo.

Like most of the other companies on this list, Life Biosciences has chosen to focus on the underlying biological drivers of aging. But the Boston-headquartered biotech is attempting to carve out a niche by focusing on epigenetics.

“Epigenetic regulation governs how genes are expressed without changing the underlying DNA sequence,” Chief Scientific Officer Sharon Rosenzweig-Lipson explained to BioSpace in an email. As people grow older, however, certain “epigenetic markers” stick and gradually accumulate on their DNA, altering the expression of genes and, in turn, leading to disease. This is the process that Life Bio seeks to target.

“Our Partial Epigenetic Reprogramming (PER) platform is designed to restore cellular function by resetting the epigenetic landscape,” Rosenzweig-Lipson said. The PER technology allows Life Bio to reverse molecular hallmarks of aging while also preserving the identity of its target cells.

“Ultimately, we envision a future where a single therapeutic can have multi-organ impact and even longer-term, where whole-body cellular rejuvenation becomes a reality,” she said.

But that vision is still a ways off. While Life Bio works to clinically validate its approach, the biotech will first seek to address individual, “clearly defined” conditions, according to Rosenzweig-Lipson. For instance, its most mature asset, a preclinical gene therapy dubbed ER-100, is being studied for glaucoma and non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. Life Bio also has four other programs running, though all are still in the discovery phase with no disclosed indications as of yet.

Life Bio expects to push ER-100, which Rosenzweig-Lipson says would be “one of the first applications of cellular rejuvenation through partial epigenetic reprogramming in humans,”, into early-stage clinical development by early 2026.

Since its founding in 2017, privately held Life Bio has raised more than $158 million in funding, including $50 million in series B capital in January 2019 and $82 million in a series C round in January 2022. Alpha Wave Ventures is an investor.

While the other companies on this list incorporate artificial intelligence and other forms of computational technologies in their drug development pipelines, Boston-based Insilico Medicine is perhaps the most AI-centric of the pack.

The company runs on an end-to-end generative AI platform, allowing it to rapidly but efficiently discover and advance assets. This approach has been fruitful for Insilico, yielding more than 20 preclinical candidates since 2021, 10 of which have since received investigational new drug clearance from the FDA.

Insilico has even developed its own generative AI software suite, which is now commercially available, to help companies “improve the quality and productivity of pharmaceutical research,” as per its website.

Of Insilico’s assets, the most mature is rentosertib, a small-molecule inhibitor of the protein TNIK, which is a key regulator of several metabolic signaling pathways. According to a June 2024 publication in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, TNIK could play a role in many different diseases, such as cancer, metabolic disorder and neurological conditions—and its involvement across various biological pathways “converges upon several hallmarks of aging.”

Insilico has also recognized the potential of TNIK as a longevity target, noting on its website that the molecule “contributes to the pathogenesis of several chronic diseases and aging-related organ damage.” Insilico is studying rentosertib in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis—for which the biotech has wrapped up Phase IIa testing—and kidney fibrosis. Insilico also has several Phase I programs for various aging-related conditions, including breast cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Insilico’s AI-forward approach has garnered strong support throughout the years. In January, the company closed a series E financing, bringing in $110 million in proceeds. Insilico at the time also noted that it has so far secured more than $2.1 billion in pipeline out-licensing agreements—including the September 2023 deal with Exeixis and the January 2024 agreement with Menarini, which the partners expanded in January this year.

At the same time, Insilico has several ongoing discovery and development partnerships, including the November 2022 arrangement with Sanofi involving a $21.5 million upfront payment and up to $1.2 billion in milestones.

Rounding out this list is California-based Rubedo Life Sciences, which is working on agents that selectively target and eliminate senescent cells.

In an email to BioSpace, Sahir Ali, solo general partner at the investment firm Modi Ventures, called Rubedo a “standout example” of longevity therapeutics, pointing to the biotech’s platform, which is “designed to discover and develop senolytic drugs for multiple age-related diseases.” Rubedo is a portfolio company of Modi Ventures.

Rubedo, Ali contended, is taking a “mechanism-first, disease-agnostic” approach to longevity.

What distinguishes Rubedo from the rest of the longevity space is its use of single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial multi-omics—two cutting-edge techniques that allow the biotech to look at the changes within a cell with high resolution. Rubedo also supports its drug development efforts with its proprietary AI-driven platform Alembic to identify potential druggable targets for therapeutics.

Taken together, this approach not only allows Rubedo to address underlying pathways of aging-related conditions but also “preserve biological youth,” according to the biotech’s website.

Such a lofty goal is still a few years away, however. The company’s most mature asset only entered Phase I studies in May. The candidate, dubbed RLS-1496, is a potentially disease-altering modulator of the GPX4 enzyme, which prevents cell death. RLS-1496 specifically targets pathological “zombie” cells that contribute to inflammation-driven aging. Rubedo is initially testing RLS-1496 for dermatology applicationsin plaque psoriasis, aging skin and atopic dermatitis.

Ali’s Modi Ventures participated in Rubedo’s series A financing in April 2024, which gave the biotech a $40 million infusion to support the development of RLS-1496. The fundraise was led by Khosla Ventures and Ahren Innovation capital. Jakimov’s LongeVC also participated in the effort.