Juvenescence, a Tortola, British Virgin Islands-based company focused on therapeutics for ageing and the diseases of ageing, closed its US $12.3m seed funding round.
Backers included Foresite Capital, Karim Hakimzadeh, Andrew Banks, and Christian Angermayer’s Apeiron Investment Group.
Two of Juvenescence’s founders, Chairman Jim Mellon and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Gregory Bailey, invested $1.5m each.
The company intends to use the funds to
establish new collaborations with academic institutions built around therapeutic candidates targeting ageing or the diseases of ageing.
Founded in March 2017 by Jim Mellon, Dr. Greg Bailey, Dr. Declan Doogan, Anthony Chow, and Alexander Pickett, Juvenescence is a biotech company focused on therapies to increase healthy human longevity. It will create or invest in new companies with ageing or age-related therapeutics, by in-license compounds from academia or industry, or doing a joint venture to develop therapeutics for longevity. The company invested in Insilico Medicine, a leader in applying artificial intelligence techniques to the challenges of drug discovery and development. Insilico’s AI engine can generate novel compounds with specified pharmacological activity or analyse existing data sets to identify novel targets of interest or important subgroups. As part of its investment, Juvenescence formed Juvenescence AI, a joint venture with Insilico that has a license to acquire five compound families per year generated by Insilico’s AI engine.
FinSMEs
08/01/2018