MoglingBio closes seed investment round with Kizoo Technology Capital.
MoglingBio, a privately held biotech company, has announced today that it has successfully completed its first seed investment round. Sole investor is venture capital firm Kizoo Technology Capital, a rejuvenation biotech investor focused on startups reversing age-related damage on a cellular and molecular level.
Longevity.Technology: Kizoo continues to add to an already-impressive array of investments. Providing seed and follow-on financing Kizoo brings its experience in high-growth tech and biotech to the emerging field of rejuvenation biotech.
As part of Michael Greve‘s Forever Healthy Group, Kizoo directly supports the creation of startups turning research on the root causes of aging into therapies and services for human application. Investments include Cellvie, Cyclarity Therapeutics, Revel Pharmaceuticals, Elastrin Therapeutics, LIfT BioSciences and others.
MoglingBio is developing new pharmacological approaches to rejuvenate old stem cells of the hematopoietic (blood cell formation) system. Aging causes stem cells to lose their normal structure by increased activity of the protein CDC42. This loss of structure leads to decreased production and quality of blood and immune cells, and this can cause leukemia, various blood diseases and severely weaken the immune system.
Normalising CDC42 activity can restore structure, order and functionality in those aged stem cells. Treated cells can perform their tasks again in a juvenile way, and thereby contribute to both, the rejuvenation of stem cells and the immune system.
The underlying technology was developed over the last 15 years by the two scientific co-founders, Professor Yi Zheng, co-director of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute and leader of the Signaling and Drug Discovery Program at the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation, and Professor Hartmut Geiger, director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Ulm University in Germany.
MoglingBio’s CEO is Dr Jürgen Reess; Reess previously held the position of Senior Vice President at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma, where he supervised the development, approval and launch of numerous blockbuster therapies for autoimmune diseases, interstitial lung diseases, central nervous system disorders and cancer.
Dr Reess told Longevity.Technology: “Mogling started its work in February, and we are already very excited by our progress. Kizoo’s financial support will allow us to pursue our goal of rejuvenating aging stem cells, which are so important for blood cell production and the immune system.”
MoglingBio’s approach has particular potential for treating diseases of the blood system and improving the immune system, Dr Reess told us.
“CDC42 is a small RhoGTPase, and its activity is elevated in old hematopoetic stem cells,” he explained. “This causes the aging of these cells. We are pursuing pharmacological approaches to inhibit the elevated activity of CDC42, and by that, re-order and rejuvenate the function of these old cells.”
It would seem that MoglingBio has a bright future ahead.
“We do hope that our approach will make a real difference in the future by eventually bringing a therapy for normalising CDC42 activity to clinic,” Rees said. “We also have a particular interest in the immune system and how aging affects it – this has been especially significant during the COVID crisis, particularly regarding the vaccination responses of the elderly. We are extremely proud that beside the results from animals, we could show the same effects of addressing CDC42 hyperactivity also in human cells already.”
“We believe that MoglingBio’s technology is groundbreaking by truly rejuvenating old stem cells – not only alleviating age-related diseases, but reversing age-related decline in immune system function,” added Frank Schueler, Managing Director of Kizoo Technology Capital.
We’ll be finding out more about MoglingBio and chatting to Dr Jürgen Reess in the near future – stay tuned!
