"Billionaire Jim Mellon bets that a 'stock market mania' will be sparked by technologies that make people live past 100." The investor and astute stock market trend catcher shared this prediction in an interview for NEO.LIFE. It appears that anti-aging technology could be the investors’ dream and has the possibility to make a big wave in the biotechnology industry. Such technology could offer a valuable window of opportunity, one that every business executive, investor and stakeholder in the health sector may want to look into.
Anti-aging technology is at the crossroads of many different aspects of the biotech world. I've seen this firsthand, having worked with pharmaceutical and biotech institutions on anti-cancer therapeutics. Anti-aging tech may be able to supplement many existing technologies and therapies due to its diversity and importance in the progression of disease. The first step to learning how to harness this tech is identifying what's currently happening in the anti-aging industry.
The anti-aging tech wave is moving faster than you might expect. When He Jiankui announced that he had produced the first gene-edited babies, he was met with a lot of skepticism and criticism. One key takeaway from this development, however, is that gene editing technologies have come a long way from their noble origins. Jiankui claims to have successfully disabled the gene responsible for producing a protein that allows for the transmission of HIV. His goal was to make the babies resistant to the virus. The technology he used was the Crispr-Cas9 editing technique.
Some research shows that the Crispr-Cas9 technique can also be used to edit the many genetic components that propagate aging. Even though Crispr-Cas9 has come a long way, using it to manipulate the aging process is still a somewhat novel procedure, one that may provide an opportunity for the progressive tech or health-based startup to exploit.
It starts with investing time to understand the technology and then committing resources to improve on the existing bed of innovation. The secret to anti-aging might be on your fingertips — assuming you operate in or have ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Away from novel technologies and into more of the conventional, the secret to anti-aging might be less discrete than was formerly envisaged. At least that's what Nir Barzilai, an anti-aging researcher, believes his TAME study may prove in the next coming years. As reported by WIRED, a study of 90,400 type 2 diabetes patients found that those who were taking metformin, an inexpensive drug that's often the first choice for type 2 diabetics, outlived those on other drugs as well as the nondiabetics included as a comparison. The TAME study is meant to be a formal and detailed inquiry into the mechanism underlying this process and possible ways of using metformin as an anti-aging drug.
The theory that metformin could be used as an anti-aging tool could mean that the bar for startups looking to hitch onto the anti-aging ride might not be too high after all. For their proposed research, Barzilai and his colleagues are hoping for "a relatively modest amount of funding." As I see it, this emphasizes the point that although funding is essential, it is not the limiting factor in anti-aging research. Businesses looking to make a mark in the anti-aging sector may be able to get right to work with available resources and the conviction that good progress can still be made.
The startup Elysium Health has already established this fact. In addition to making progress research-wise, it currently has a product on the market. With total funding to date of just $31.2 million, Elysium is a stellar representation of the fact that a lot can be achieved with a compact budget.
As reported by Fast Company, Elysium’s product is designed to boost a person's levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), a compound found naturally in the body. The amount of NAD in a person's body decreases over time, and scientists like Leonard Guarente, co-founder of Elysium and chief scientist, believe that helping the body synthesize its own NAD might be the key to unlocking the human fountain of youth.
Guarente's propositions are backed by scientific research. NAD can elevate a particular group of enzymes called sirtuins. "Researchers have found that boosting the activity of sirtuins ... can extend [the] lifespan of yeasts, worms, mice, and other animals," Fast Company reports. One scientific paper published in 2013 showed that boosting NAD levels in mice transformed tissue belonging to two-year-old mice into what appeared to be that of six-month-old mice. Elysium’s core product is a bold attempt to reproduce similar effects in humans.
With such a product, I believe that Elysium demonstrates that the average startup or business can rival pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline in the anti-aging market. In my opinion, the company has slowly but steadily established itself as a critical player in the rapidly budding anti-aging market. And although there is very little data to corroborate the massive potential nested in this market, GlaxoSmithKline’s $720 million purchase of Sirtis Pharmaceuticals in 2008 and Google’s launching of Calico (an anti-aging research startup) in 2013 seem to point to its potential worth. For companies involved in biotechnology, the time has never been more right to foray into the anti-aging industry.
For anyone looking to tap into this opportunity, one way could be supporting research or backing anyone (or any firm) already invested in valid research. The anti-aging market is already set up and ready to shift into next gear. There appears to be a budding pool of investors and consumers as well as a vibrant marketplace. All that’s left is creating an off-the-shelf product that delivers on the industry’s high expectations — and the race to see who will be first is already on. While the big industry giants may predominate in the sector, small biotech startups can take heart in the fact that there’s no shortage of funding for anti-aging research if there’s ever a need to scale up to the capabilities of traditional big pharma. In 2018 alone, investors poured $850 million into anti-aging and longevity startups.
Source: https://www.forbes.c...i-aging-market/
Original source: https://medium.com/n...ty-e9a415dd0569
