Longevica to Launch an Open Research Platform to Accelerate the Discovery of Life Extension Mechanisms

PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Longevica, a life science company researching the mechanisms of healthy aging and life extension, has announced its plan to launch a new large-scale study and open source, end-to-end platform to facilitate scientific research collaboration and breakthrough discoveries in the longevity science field and expedite consumer access to resulting novel health products. $2.5M raised in a funding round led by Xploration Capital will support the development of the platform and integration of the Longevica research dataset, created over 11 years with $13M investment and including the largest study of 1033 compounds covering the entire spectrum of modern pharmacology.

In its initial experiment, the Longevica research team discovered a set of compounds that show a significant life extension effect of 16 to 22 percent. In the new study, Longevica will test 300 compounds in the most promising classes, and will invite scientists and research institutions from across the world to test drugs of their choice in full-scale pharmacological screening experiments. Longevica's platform will provide control groups while managing operations and administrative costs, making screening trials more affordable, and the entire Longevica dataset will be open for data mining, experimentation, and analysis to researchers in real time. The research will be conducted at Jackson Laboratory, a leading biomedical research institution.

"If you want to understand biological aging, you must first disrupt a costly, bureaucratic, and siloed research model with a nimble, open ecosystem that vastly increases the volume of research and pace of discovery," says Longevica co-founder and CEO Ainar Abdrakhmanov. "Our end-to-end platform will reduce barriers, foster collaboration and experiment data collection and analysis within the ecosystem, and provide a complete functional solution that safely and efficiently moves the benefits of life extension scientific research into the hands of consumers."

There are many scientific approaches to understanding and altering the biology of aging, including genomics, cell therapy, and toxin elimination. Longevica's research is focused on experimental examination of known pharmacological compounds to understand and harness the mechanisms behind their effects on biological damage and aging.

"We discovered that one of the fundamental drivers of aging is the accumulation of toxic load composed of heavy metals in the body," says Abdrakhmanov. "Our research led to the development of a patented product clinically proven to both block absorption and eliminate the accumulation of environmental toxins in the body, resulting in short-term health benefits and long-term life-extension effect."

"Longevica spent 11 years researching one of the most challenging problems out there and applied a fairly simple yet unique approach – testing known drugs without trying to choose the winning hypothesis in advance," said Eugene Timko, co-founder and Managing Partner at Xploration Capital. "We believe that the greatest results are yet to come and we foresee that new data will lead the team to new discoveries."

"One issue haunting the field of longevity is availability and quality of the data, specifically the lifespan data under pharmacological perturbations. Short of the NIH's Intervention Testing Program, it's hard to point to a source of such knowledge with the appropriate sample size and rigor of studies", said Dr Leon Peshkin, Systems Biology Department, Harvard Medical School. "That's why I am particularly optimistic about Longevica's new initiative. Their past experiment already demonstrated how to approach "reverse engineering" of the aging processes in contrast to mere "screening" – as in searching for an accidental elixir of life. In the new phase they have not just found a way to validate and expand their findings, they are opening it up to a wide research community – we all stand to benefit from such an attitude".

About Longevica
Longevica harnesses objective scientific research, clinical studies, research collaboration, and technology to develop novel, proactive therapeutic interventions to improve health and quality of life, prevent age-related disease, and facilitate the productive extension of lifespan. Learn more and connect with us at longevica.com.

SOURCE Longevica