A Midtown-based therapeutics company hopes to tap the growing market of anti-aging drugs with a suite of pharmaceutical research, and investors are taking notice.
Cambrian Bio recently raised $23 million to advance its portfolio of drug discovery platforms focused on the biological processes that break down with age. The company is one of a growing list of startups seeking a corner of the emerging longevity market, driven in part by tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, who have bankrolled the movement.
Cambrian Bio functions as a kind of umbrella company with offshoots focused on a host of diseases that can lead to debilitation later in life. Its goal is to market therapies for illnesses that make it harder to maintain a healthy and active lifestyle into old age. The company has a network of startups in its drug discovery pipeline, each focused on a different class of ailments. Its most advanced work is focused on metabolic diseases through a company called Amplifier Therapeutics.
Under Cambrian Bio’s model, each spinoff company is run by the research and development team with collaboration from external scientists specializing in one of a handful of disease categories. The company claims the approach allows for greater flexibility to delve into specific areas of drug discovery, a field that can take a decade or more to bring a single drug to market.
Amplifier Therapeutics’ signature project is a drug targeting obesity and associated disorders, which is currently in early-phase clinical trials. Another offshoot, Tornado Therapeutics, has several drugs in the pipeline, including medications intended to treat respiratory tract infection and cancer, both of which are entering clinical phases. Other Cambrian Bio companies are focused on fibrotic, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases and women’s health.
Cambrian Bio is not alone in pitching the promise of longer life to investors, although none have successfully developed a cure for aging. The field of startups focused on rejuvenation has erupted in recent years, backed by some of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest magnates.
One of the most well-known, Redwood City-based Altos Labs, which focuses on cell restoration, launched in 2021 with $3 billion in early fundraising rounds with participation from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner, according to the research company PitchBook. More recently, it raised another $1.5 billion from investors in February 2024.
Another is Retro Biosciences, a drug discovery startup studying the cellular mechanics involved in aging, which raised $180 million in early-stage funding led by ChatGPT founder Sam Altman in 2022, according to PitchBook. Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, has made no secret of his goal to defy death, having planned to be cryogenically frozen when he dies with the hope of being revived in the future. He has invested in multiple companies aiming to stop or reverse aging.
