Healthspan biotech company clock.bio announced it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding, led by LocalGlobe and with participation from BlueYard Capital, Onsight Ventures, and Dr. Jonathan Milner (the founder of Abcam). The company made significant progress in decoding the biology of human rejuvenation, identifying more than 100 genes that jointly constitute an “Atlas of Rejuvenation Factors.”
Even though all somatic cells irreversibly age, stem cells can turn back the clock. And working with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), clock.bio has developed a proprietary aging model that can force stem cells to age, recreating the known cellular hallmarks of aging. This intervention triggers a self-rejuvenation mechanism whereby iPSCs repair these hallmarks and turn young and healthy.
Based at the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge, clock.bio has set out to decode this rejuvenation mechanism, understand which genes regulate this process, and translate the resulting insights to clinical applications. Running a genome-wide CRISPR screen, with single-cell RNA-sequencing of over 3 million cells that generated 20 terabytes of data, clock.bio was able to decode the rejuvenation mechanism innate in human stem cells, identifying more than 100 genes that jointly constitute an “Atlas of Rejuvenation Factors.”
The company will also now focus on validating these hits in somatic cells, analyzing the pathways at work, and mapping them to specific disease indications. And clock.bio hypothesizes is that understanding these genes associated with rejuvenation will reverse several aging hallmarks by repurposing existing drugs for increased healthspan. In addition, genetic targets for repairing individual aging hallmarks will be highly relevant for developing novel treatments for age-related diseases.
This seed funding enabled clock.bio to generate its Atlas of Rejuvenation Factors and will also enable next steps in validation and target prioritization. And the company has expanded its team through several critical hires, including the onboarding of Markus Gstöttner (CEO) and Rodrigo Santos (CTO). Along with Mark Kotter (Chairman and co-founder), the team will now focus on developing its findings and identifying the right partners to initiate clinical trials.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our vision is to extend human healthspan by several years, in line with growing longevity. Our approach decodes an existing part of human biology, which makes us confident the findings will be translatable. Running CRISPR screens across the full human genome constitutes an unbiased, comprehensive methodology, which now gives us more than one shot on target. We are thrilled to have reached this first major milestone with the support of our investors.”
-Markus Gstöttner, CEO, clock.bio
“We’re excited to support clock.bio, whose approach provides a unique, high-throughput and rapid way to investigate the biology of rejuvenation. The company’s atlas holds the potential to open up several new routes to treating age-related diseases. We’re committed to advancing these discoveries into clinical applications that could turn out to be transformative.”
-Ferdi Sigona, LocalGlobe
