We’ve sifted through our coverage of top longevity start-ups – and here are five you should know about.

Sifted asked us to nominate some of the hottest up-and-coming European longevity start-ups that their readers should keep an eye on. And of course we were delighted to be asked to talk about some of the companies we feel are making waves in the antiaging space. So here are five to watch (and, frankly, the sector is booming so much, we could have given Sifted many more!).

Shift Bioscience (UK)

Currently raising £3.5 million, Shift Bioscience aims to cut a path through the obstacles of cellular rejuvenation and to identify and leverage safe targets.

Cellular reprogramming has been measured by DNA methylation clocks to be one of the most powerful potential interventions against aging, but its key challenge to date has been safety – Shift is on a mission to de-risk it, identifying safe genes that could become the targets of rejuvenation therapies and building on an existing solid in silico foundation towards preclinical and clinical development.

Humanity (UK)

Humanity is an app designed to help slow or even reverse your rate of aging. It calculates your rate of aging and biological age by drawing on data from your smartphone and wearable devices to track biomarkers such as heart rate, step rate, sleep and activity.

Humanity launched in August this year, raising $5 million from 65 of the world’s leading health- and consumer-tech investors and founders. The app has already amassed more than 30,000 users, and recently added a new nutrition tracking component, as it seeks to deliver “more predictive and more personalised” results for its users.

GlycanAge (UK)

Personalised medicine is the future, but measuring aging biomarkers is a complex undertaking. Taking a different approach to measuring biological age, GlycanAge is a British-Croatian start-up focused on analysing glycosylation patterns to deliver what it claims is the “most accurate” measure of biological age.

A direct-to-consumer glycan test kit measures both biological age and chronic low grade systemic inflammation, and clinicians provide understanding and advice on lifestyle changes to improve results. Previously self-funded, GlycanAge is now the process of raising £850,000 in seed capital to support a scale-up of operations.

Rejuvenate Biomed (Belgium)

Rejuvenate Biomed is a biomedical company developing novel combination drugs for age-related diseases. The company has developed a proprietary AI screening platform to evaluate if safe, existing treatments can be used in new combinations to maintain our natural cellular resilience and postpone the onset of certain age-related diseases.

The company recently secured €15.7 million in Series B funding, led by Rejuveron and Vesalius Biocapital. The funds will be used to accelerate the clinical development of its lead drug candidate in sarcopenia, an age-related disease defined by the loss of muscle strength, quality and mass.

Genflow Biosciences (UK)

British biotech start-up Genflow is on a mission to develop gene therapies designed to halt or slow the aging process and is leveraging the power of centenarians at its Belgian R&D facilities.

Backed by investors including Longevitytech.fund, the company is developing therapies that deliver a variant of the sirtuin 6 gene found in people aged over one hundred. When expressed, this gene can extend lifespan in mice by an average of 30%, and Genflow aims to use this genetic variant to prevent the accelerated aging process and already has a pipeline of compounds for human indications including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and Werner’s syndrome.