Anti-aging is one of the fastest growing fields in today’s biotech advancement. According to this Guardian article, it was in in 2008, Novato, CA-based Buck Institute researcher Judith Campisi discovered secretion from senescent cells causes inflammation, the driver of almost every age-related diseases. This discovery shed light on scientists who believed aging is curable and eventually led many in believing clearing out senescent cells from our body is the new north to get to the root of aging.
Later in 2016, Unity, a Brisbane, CA-based biotech company, then a startup, published its repeated experiments in eliminating senescent cells in aged animals. This paper was said to “the proof concept for the entire industry.”
The capital market has responded to this scientific breakthrough. Unity – backed by Bezos and Thile – went public in 2018 and was believed the first exit from so-called “longevity startups,” although it raised over $200 million before its $85 million IPO.
Other notable senescence startups include Seattle-based Oisín Biotechnologies , Senolytic Therapeutics in Spain and Cleara in the Netherlands.
Senescence startups have different approaches to remove senescent cells. Unity tries to use “senolytics”, the small molecules, to inhibit the biological pathways senescent cells use to resist normal death of the aging cell. Clera uses an engineered peptide molecule to target a particular subtype of a senescent cell and claims its safer, according to Guardian.
None of these practices went in a clinical trial. It’s also worthy to note that “not everything about senescent cells is bad. The cells and their secretions are believed to be important during the development of embryos”, according to MIT Tech Review and senescent cell also plays a dual role in cancer prevention, according to Frontiers in Oncology (NIH link) . These add more complication to the battle on senescent cells, but the war on aging is surely only accelerating.