- Gameto recently announced it raised $23 million in funding. These are the details.
Gameto — a biotechnology start-up solving the problem of accelerated ovarian aging to change the trajectory of women’s health and equality — recently announced that it has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Future Ventures with participation from Bold Capital Partners, Lux Capital, Plum Alley, TA Ventures, Overwater Ventures, Robert Nelsen and Anne Wojcicki. And Gameto also raised $3 million in Seed funding in March 2020 from a range of notable investors including Jack Abraham, SALT Fund, FJ Labs, Dan Rose and Brian Armstrong.
The Series A funding was led by venture-capital firm Future Ventures. Founded by Steve Jurvetson and Maryanna Saenko, Future Ventures is focusing on early-stage disruptive technologies to help trailblazing entrepreneurs develop and commercialize unique ideas that have the potential to reinvent industries.
With some of the initial research conducted at the George Church lab at Harvard Medical School, Gameto achieved ground-breaking results in creating the first human reprogrammed cells of the ovary (granulosa cells & oocytes precursors) to solve the problem of accelerated ovarian aging, which occurs up to 5x faster than any organ in the body.
Gameto is building a platform for ovarian therapeutics to initially address menopause and improve assisted fertility with 3 sequenced programs:
— Fertilo – To improve assisted fertility and with the mission to eliminate infertility over time for all women.
— Deovo – To initiate drug discovery and a computational platform for ovarian aging.
— Ameno – Aiming to make the medical burden of menopause optional.
Gameto wants to synchronize the pace of ovarian aging to the rate of aging in other organs like the liver, brain, or skin. And when ovaries are termed “geriatric” by many traditional medical criteria, the rest of the body is certainly not and this has contributed to the societal and demographic issues we are facing today.
Considering the human healthspan and lifespan have increased significantly, Gameto believes this biological phenomenon is no longer fit for purpose and is a problem worth solving. Gameto sees the potential to expand its platform to the entire aging market.
KEY QUOTE:
“Ovaries age five times faster than other organs, resulting in infertility, early menopause, and increased years of poor health for women. We want to change the narrative of female reproductive longevity and address the root causes of sex/gender inequality in our society.”
— Dr. Dina Radenkovic, CEO of Gameto
