Ear­li­er this year, an ex­ec­u­tive from Ju­ve­nes­cence-backed AgeX pre­dict­ed the field of longevi­ty will even­tu­al­ly “dwarf the dot­com boom.” Greg Bai­ley, the UK-based an­ti-ag­ing biotech’s CEO, cer­tain­ly hopes so.

Gre­go­ry Bai­ley

On Mon­day, Ju­ve­nes­cence com­plet­ed its $100 mil­lion Se­ries B round of fi­nanc­ing. The com­pa­ny is backed by British bil­lion­aire Jim Mel­lon — who wrote his 400-page guide to in­vest­ing in the field of longevi­ty short­ly af­ter launch­ing the com­pa­ny in 2017. Bai­ley, who served as a board di­rec­tor for sev­en years at Medi­va­tion be­fore Pfiz­er swal­lowed the biotech for $14 bil­lion, is joined by De­clan Doogan, an in­dus­try vet­er­an with stints at Pfiz­er $PFE and Amarin $AM­RN.

The busi­ness of an­ti-ag­ing is gain­ing steam — Bank of Amer­i­ca has fore­cast the mar­ket will bal­loon to $610 bil­lion by 2025, from an es­ti­mat­ed $110 bil­lion cur­rent­ly — but in­vestors are cau­tious, Bai­ley not­ed in an in­ter­view with End­points News.

“I think there’s a huge amount of skep­ti­cism. There’s an enor­mous num­ber of char­la­tans…I un­der­stand why they would be think­ing you know, is this re­al?” he said. “(W)alk in­to your lo­cal drug­store, you’re go­ing to see about 50 prod­ucts that claim to be an­ti-ag­ing, and I can as­sure you that none of them are. So I think that there’s a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism.”

In­sti­tu­tions tend to move in lock­step when they’re in­vest­ing, he added.

“VCs are as­ton­ish­ing, you know, if one of them buys the yel­low hal­ter top, all of them have to buy a yel­low hal­ter top,” he said, quot­ing tech VC Tim Drap­er.

Bai­ley sug­gest­ed that in­vestors are not quite as en­thu­si­as­tic about plac­ing bets on an­ti-ag­ing, as they are in the tech world. “We’re dra­mat­i­cal­ly be­ing un­der­served…it’s not get­ting the ex­po­sure that tech gets, con­sid­er­ing the size of the mar­ket,” he said. “There is a dis­con­nect on what in­vestors — so­phis­ti­cat­ed in­vestors —  in­sti­tu­tions, how they’re view­ing this, I don’t think they quite grasp how fast this is go­ing to hap­pen, and how big it’s go­ing to be.”

Ju­ve­nes­cence has now raised $165 mil­lion in the last 18 months — in Jan­u­ary it un­veiled the first $46 mil­lion tranche of the Se­ries B — and the mon­ey is be­ing used to fund longevi­ty projects with the lofty goal of ex­tend­ing hu­man lifes­pans to 150 years.

It is a pop­u­lar vi­sion. In­spired by Mel­lon, ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist Sergey Young — who is in charge of all things longevi­ty at the non-prof­it XPRIZE and VC fund BOLD Cap­i­tal Part­ners — un­veiled a $100 mil­lion fund with the same goal in Feb­ru­ary. Google-owned stealthy biotech Cal­i­co is af­ter the same prize — and has part­nered with Ab­b­Vie $AB­BV.

Ju­ve­nes­cence has been busy, col­lab­o­rat­ing with dif­fer­ent groups and set­ting up JVs, such as Alex Zha­voronkov’s AI shop at In­sil­i­co Med­i­cine — and has in­vest­ed in firms in­clud­ing AgeX $AGE and Ly­Ge­n­e­sis. In Feb­ru­ary, Ju­ve­nes­cence de­buted an an­ti-ag­ing joint ven­ture with the Buck In­sti­tute ded­i­cat­ed to in­duc­ing ke­to­sis. In re­cent months, it spawned a new biotech called Sou­vien Ther­a­peu­tics, which is de­vel­op­ing med­i­cines to ad­dress the epi­ge­net­ic un­der­pin­nings of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, and in­ject­ed $6.5 mil­lion in eq­ui­ty fi­nanc­ing in­to a pre­clin­i­cal meta­bol­ic dis­ease biotech dubbed BY­OMass.

This quar­ter, Ju­ve­nes­cence plans to close three more projects, Bai­ley said. The com­pa­ny is work­ing on for­ti­fy­ing its ma­chine learn­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty to make sense of huge swathes of da­ta that could help iso­late path­ways to de­vel­op dis­ease-mod­i­fy­ing ther­a­peu­tics, as well as adding prod­ucts to pad its port­fo­lio. The idea is to pur­sue prod­ucts that ad­dress in­flam­ma­tion and fi­bro­sis to slow ag­ing.

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny will main­tain a fo­cus on re­gen­er­a­tion. “I’m mind­ful that if you live to 150, you know, peo­ple don’t want to be all wrin­kled, and in a wheel­chair. So what we want to be able to do is re­gen­er­ate tis­sues,” Bai­ley said.

The plan for an IPO re­mains in place. Yet Bai­ley ac­knowl­edged the com­pa­ny is wary of leap­ing on­to a mar­ket pre­ma­ture­ly, draw­ing a com­par­i­son with plant-based meat sub­sti­tute mak­er Be­yond Meat.

“Clear­ly, we need to have a re­cep­tive mar­ket and…we’ve seen that with Be­yond Meat…so I think that in­vestors are go­ing to come to terms for this in the near fu­ture,” he said. “We’re talk­ing to banks…I think that we’re well-poised, go­ing in­to the next year to do that.”

In the com­ing five to sev­en years, Ju­ve­nes­cence has bold plans. It ex­pects to have at least four an­ti-ag­ing prod­ucts on the mar­ket, Bai­ley said. “I’m hope­ful that we have gone through proof-of-con­cept with three phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agents and are li­cens­ing with big phar­ma, be­cause we’re not hir­ing 10,000 sales reps. So we’ll let them do that.”

Sci­ence fic­tion is now sci­ence, he un­der­scored. “I think the world is go­ing to be shocked.”

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

ViiV Healthcare has teamed up with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and three generic manufacturers to expand access to medicine that can prevent HIV.

ViiV and the Medicines Patent Pool jointly announced Thursday that the MPP signed sub-licensing agreements with Aurobindo, Cipla and Viatris to manufacture generics of a long-acting form of cabotegravir for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). As a result of the agreement, the manufacturers will be able to develop, manufacture and supply generic versions of cabotegravir LA in 90 countries — subject to regulatory approvals.