Michael Greve, you might recall, is a strong supporter of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) rejuvenation biotechnology approach to aging, first put forward twenty years ago by Aubrey de Grey and collaborators. Five years ago Michael Greve pledged $10 million to be split between SENS-focused research and investment in startup companies arising from that research. His venture firm, Kizoo Technology Ventures, has invested in companies that are developing potential rejuvenation therapies, such as the cross-link breaking enzymes of Revel Pharmaceuticals, and the senolytic suicide gene therapy of Oisin Biotechnologies. He founded a non-profit, Forever Healthy Foundation, that, among other things, runs the Undoing Aging conference series and publishes serious, sober, detailed technical reviews of approaches to treating aging. Now Michael Greve is greatly expanding his efforts to support the new and growing longevity industry.
In the SENS viewpoint, which is itself a synthesis of evidence gathered over past decades of scientific research, aging is caused by the accumulation of fundamental forms of well-known cell and tissue damage that arise as a side-effect of the normal operation of metabolism. The best approach to intervention is to periodically repair that damage. Repair is explicitly rejuvenation.
Scientists and supporters of SENS advocated for removal of the senescent cells that accumulate in old tissues a decade before the rest of the scientific community came around to supporting that idea. The animal data produced since then shows that clearance of senescent cells produces profound reversals of aging and age-related disease in old mice. It is even capable of reversing the detrimental restructuring of the heart in old individuals that leads to heart failure. Now, a good fraction of the growing longevity industry is pursuing the development of senolytic therapies capable of selective destruction of senescent cells. Thus to my eyes, the more support there is for the SENS approach to the challenge of aging the better. It is clearly the right way forward towards meaningful control over aging within our lifetimes.
Kizoo commits €300 million to advance rejuvenation startups
Michael Greve, founder of the Forever Healthy Foundation and owner of Kizoo Technology Ventures, announced today that he will make available an additional €300 million to be invested in rejuvenation biotech.The funds, to be deployed via Kizoo, will be used to create and support more startups in the rejuvenation space. They will also allow Kizoo to maintain a strong commitment to its key startups during follow-up rounds and to advance the therapies from clinical development to public availability.
With this €300 million commitment, Greve and Kizoo double down on their mission to accelerate the advent of rejuvenation biotechnology by doing lighthouse investments in entirely new, repair-based approaches that treat the root causes of aging and thus overcome age-related diseases. Through the creation of successful companies, they seek to inspire scientists, investors, and the general public by demonstrating that human rejuvenation is not science fiction anymore and that the resulting therapies are affordable and uncomplicated.
Technologies pioneered by Kizoo's startups include removal of arterial plaque, decalcification of aged tissue, breaking of protein-glucose cross-links, and delivery of new mitochondria to aged cells - all aiming to prevent and repair common age-related conditions such as myocardial infarction, stroke, high blood pressure, tissue stiffening, skin aging, and loss of muscle function.
"I am really grateful that we can use the funds we have created with our highly successful technology ventures to contribute to the quest to get aging under full medical control and to make age-related diseases a thing of the past. For me, it is a worthy cause that is exciting in a technological, commercial, and above all, a humanitarian way." Greve expects that the new funds, in combination with the strong, multi-round commitment of Kizoo to its key startups, should trigger co-investments of up to 3-4 times the initial amount, resulting in a significant acceleration of the development and public availability of the therapies.
View the full article at FightAging
