clock.bio enters anti-ageing race with $4m and rejuvenation biology plan
A new start-up founded by Mark Kotter, a neurosurgeon and the CEO and founder of bit.bio, has raised $4million to identify the causes of ageing – and slow them down, gene by gene.
Longevity biotech clock.bio is developing novel regenerative medicines leveraging the natural ability of human pluripotent stem cells to prevent and treat age-related diseases. The company’s immediate scientific objective is to decode all rejuvenation programmes present in human cells, to build an atlas of disease and rejuvenation targets for clinical translation.
“We have a bold mission of extending human healthspan by 20 years based on biomarkers of ageing in a Phase 3 trial by the end of this decade,” said Dr Kotter. “Embryonic stem cells hold the key to unlocking rejuvenation biology. We believe that a comprehensive understanding of all relevant repair processes is the best starting point for designing regenerative and healthspan-increasing treatments.”
The company is based at ideasSpace but operates largely virtually with eight key team members in the US, in Cambridge and in Vienna, says CEO Markus Gstöttner.
“Pluripotent stem cells are the only cells in the human body that can rejuvenate,” Markus says. “Our unique approach is to force-age human iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells) and trigger their self-rejuvenation mechanism. Human ageing is a complex process that is difficult to model in cell culture. The clock.bio’s model delivers ‘ageing in a dish’, where unbiased CRISPR screens reveal the genes that cause ageing/rejuvenation and thus uncover drivers.”
The new start-up is on track to decode the biology of human rejuvenation across the entire genome in 12 months. The result will be a comprehensive atlas of disease and rejuvenation targets for clinical translation. Its vision is to use this technology to enable a comprehensive decoding of rejuvenation biology, to create novel treatment approaches.
Speaking to the Cambridge Independent, Markus said: “I originally came to the UK in 2006 to study economics at LSE. After my Masters, I worked for McKinsey. I met Mark in Cambridge in 2017; I was fundraising for a clean meat company that became Meatable and we started working together. I left my job as economic advisor to the Austrian chancellor, then it was Covid, and afterwards we started cooperating again.”
As well as taking on the CEO role at clock.bio, Markus is entrepreneur-in-residence at BlueYard Capital, clock.bio’s lead investor, which has also invested in Meatable.
The new start-up is the latest addition to an increasingly crowded field of biotech companies centred around cellular or epigenetic reprogramming. Markus stresses that this is not about ‘living forever’, but rather about making the last decade or two of life more manageable.
“We have aspects of biology which are barely understood,” he says, “so why wouldn’t we try and understand how we can help?
“The first focus is on healthspan, so the ultimate decade of human life is of good quality.
“The second part is the big moral question of once you have identified new forms of treatment then access becomes paramount.
“It’s early days for us but we believe the technology can work, both in terms of equitability of access, and healthspan – to improve the quality of life.”
