Top investor talks longevity investment, optimism on SPAC deal and light at the end of the tunnel for the biotech market.
One of the speakers at October’s Rejuvenation Startup Summit in Berlin is the entrepreneur and investor, Christian Angermayer. With more than $3 billion under management through his Apeiron Investment Group, Angermayer is a major figure in the longevity sector through his platform biotech companies Cambrian and Rejuveron – building on his belief that everyone wants to live healthier, happier and longer lives.
Longevity.Technology: Ahead of Berlin’s meeting, our editor-in-chief Phil Newman caught up with Angermayer for a video interview in which he shares his views on subjects ranging from longevity investing, the biotech market, and what’s happening with his $200 million SPAC with David Sinclair and Peter Attia. Check it out below:
Angermayer on…
Investing in longevity
“What every single person really wants, so 100% of the total addressable market, is to be happy and healthy. And once you are healthy, you want to enjoy this life for a very long time. So practically, if we figure out these two things (happiness and health) these will be from my point of view some of the biggest companies in the world, because the market is automatically there.”
Starting longevity companies
“I didn’t find companies [to invest in], which had both the ambition to ultimately cure aging, or the setup to be successful in an FDA framework. So because they weren’t there, I wanted to set it up. And this led to the creation of Rejuveron and Cambrian, which is going really well and hopefully contributing to that longevity effort.”
On the FDA and longevity
“It’s getting dramatically better. We still need to lobby and get aging itself be recognised as a disease. But at the same time, we must define biomarkers with the FDA, which allow reasonable clinical trials (in terms of financing and time horizon) to be designed to prove any thesis we bring forward.”
On the $200 million biotech SPAC with David Sinclair and Peter Attia
“We haven’t done a deal yet – but I guess that most viewers here will know that the biotech markets have been awful. I think it was wrong for investors to hammer biotech that much, but at the moment, I think biotech in general is offering one of the most amazing investment opportunities. So I’m very confident that we’re gonna do a deal before our deadline expires. And obviously now, we will do a deal in a very positive environment for a buyer, because valuations have been so hammered.”
On the biotech investment landscape
“We’ve already seen that it’s bouncing back… I definitely think we’ve found the bottom. And I think now is the time to buy. I don’t think interest rates will go up as as much as people fear. I deeply believe within the next years, not decades, we will go back into that deflationary cycle, because I believe that the big forces at work in our economy are rather deflationary.”
