We are delighted to introduce our video-on-demand service: Longevity TV … initially we’re bringing you highlights from our recent conference.

Today we’re showcasing Sergey Young, the founder of the $100M Longevity Vision Fund, who joined us to reflect on investing in the Longevity sector, with particular reference to the lessons we can learn from the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Opening with the sober thought that some cities in the world have the same mortality risks from COVID-19 as climbing Mount Everest, Young goes on explain that what is different about the current situation and the lessons we can learn from it can be both summed up by one word: TECHNOLOGY.

“It’s really rewarding for me as a human being,” Young tells us, “To see an enormous degree of collaboration: governments helping governments; people and volunteers helping people; car makers and luxury goods producers repurposing their production lines to support and fight with the outbreak; former enemies, like Big Pharma, or former competitors are joining forces to fast-track R&D.”

Sergey highlights three companies that are demonstrating how important AI technology is in battling COVID-19:

• Bluedot – predicting and modeling disease outbreak early
• inferVISION – detecting COVID-19 in CT scans in just 20 seconds
• Benevolent AI – finding potential drugs in weeks, rather than months

“A call for action – we finally need to recognise aging as a disease…”

Sergey’s reflections on the current COVID crisis:
Lesson 1 – big data analytics for data prediction – Young reveals which company first “joined the dots” and predicted the coronavirus outbreak and just why we should love AI.

Lesson 2 – rapid genome sequencing of the virus – find out why synthetic copies are important and what is pushing R&D acceleration.

Lesson 3 – accelerated development of COVID diagnostics – why is the current testing landscape unique?

Lesson 4 – biotech & AI focus on drug and vaccine solutions – repurposing and vaccines.

Lesson 5 – novel methods for disease and quarantine management – robots, algorithms, QR codes and drones!

Sergey Young draws on his lessons to show how important technology has been and how it brings not only investment opportunities, but the chance to make a change to the current situation. He calls this his “Investment Takeaways” and discusses in the video how we should recognise the Turning Point and Success Factors and reveals three key investable areas:

• Drug and vaccine development
• AI in medicine
• Digital health

Watch more presentations from Lynne Cox, Aubrey de Grey, Nir Barzilai and Greg Bailey, among others here…