Dr Alex Colville joins forces with Laura Deming to advance The Longevity Fund’s mission and lead investments in longevity science moonshots.
San Francisco-based age1, a venture capital firm catalyzing the next generation of founder-led longevity biotech companies, launched today to build a community of visionaries advancing new therapeutics, tools, and technologies targeting aging and age related disease.
Longevity.Technology: The team at age1 boasts an industry-leading track record, having pioneered the first longevity-focused venture capital fund in 2011 – five years ahead of any other fund of its type – and since backed multiple IPOs and acquisitions. The firm held an initial closing for $35 million to invest in companies with the highest potential to shift the current paradigm of sick care to health preservation and extension.
Building on this success, age1 was co-founded by Laura Deming, founder of The Longevity Fund, and Alex Colville, PhD who studied the biology of aging at Stanford and has previously been biotech investment manager at family offices. Colville also established the biotech investment arm of Starbloom Capital and the philanthropic work of the Amaranth Foundation to advance the field of the biology of aging where he managed more than $100 million in investments and philanthropy. He will lead age1 as the firm’s General Partner, creating the only current longevity biotech fund managed by a PhD who studied the biology of aging.
“What started out as Laura’s recognition of a huge gap in the biotech industry of a lack of funding supporting longevity biotech has grown into an unprecedented growth in the amount of longevity biotech companies that promises to change the way people age,” said Colville.
“The Longevity Fund put longevity biotech on the map. We feel strongly that a next-generation fund with more founder resources is required to accelerate the longevity paradigm shift we are on the precipice of. age1 will back ambitious and pragmatic founders building companies to give people the agency to choose how long they live, in good health.”
The founders feel that the launch of age1 comes at a critical point in time.
Loyal, a portfolio company from The Longevity Fund, made history in March 2023 when it was the first company to receive protocol concurrence from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a clinical study with the endpoint of healthspan and lifespan. The study moves beyond only proving efficacy against a single disease and intends to show that a drug extends healthspan and lifespan in dogs. Now age1 feels the longevity biotech industry is on the brink of a similar regulatory milestone in human clinical trials.
“age1 is the next chapter in The Longevity Fund’s mission and the inflection point for the field,” said Laura Deming, co-founder of age1. “We’re motivated by the idea that age1 will be the group to make the seemingly impossible possible – extending healthy lifespan.”
The company will focus on founders and companies at the earliest stages of first-money in, pre-seed and seed funding and is resourced to continue to support companies through later rounds. The firm’s portfolio companies will have access to strategic and regulatory guidance from successful founders, the longevity field’s leading experts and access to a considerable talent network, age1 says.
The executive team of age1 has funded leading companies including Loyal, Gordian Biotechnology, Fauna Bio, Spring Discovery, Arda Therapeutics, Rubedo Life Sciences, Conception, and Bexorg.
