#14 Is the fountain of youth in the desert?
What is behind Saudi Arabia's $20 billion bet on longevity
The Agenda 👇
News bulletin 📰
Is the fountain of youth in the desert?
Recent funding in longevity 💰
Upcoming events 📅
Jobs in longevity 🧑💼
1/ News bulletin 📰
🇬🇧 A major new health programme, Our Future Health, launches in the UK - study aims to recruit 5 million participants which would make it the world’s largest study of its kind
💸 CEO and Founder of Insilico Medicine commits his wealth to supporting and developing longevity research - Alex Zhavoronkov calls on others to join him
🇺🇸 Longevity Science Foundation expands to US with new CEO - Lisa E Ireland is an experienced non-profit executive with more than 25 years of experience
😅 Intermittent exercise encourages muscle protein uptake - interrupting prolonged sitting with “activity snacks” improves the utilization of dietary amino acids
🍷 New compounds beat Resveratrol in sirtuin activation - in a blow to the red wine enthusiasts
2/ Is the fountain of youth in the desert?
Among the nations who have made longevity bioscience a core component of their industrial strategy, Saudi Arabia has emerged as an unlikely leader. With a life expectancy in of just 75 years, Saudi has long lagged similar sized nations on health outcomes as it pursued an energy intensive economic strategy. However, as the oil kingdom’s fears mount that its population is ageing at an accelerated rate, policymakers have pivoted their focus. Mohammed bin Salman’s recent policy announcement made clear that his priority lies in longevity research and sustainable energy as a twin pillar industrial plan some have compared to the focus on electronics Japan and Korea took in the 1970s.
Earlier this year the Saudi royal family launched a not-for-profit organisation called the Hevolution Foundation that plans to invest up to $1 billion a year supporting basic longevity research. Frequent readers of The Longevity Update will be sceptical of efforts that rely on deploying large sums of money into basic longevity research for meaningful outcomes. Both Altos Labs and Calico have very little to show for their eye-watering capital investment, despite their star-studded leadership teams and research capabilities. There are even outstanding question marks on the performance Sirtris, ResTORbio, and Bezos-backed Unity Biotechnology. Indeed, the annual budget of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in the US has grown to almost $4 billion today, so one must wonder if an additional $1 billion is really going to move the needle. There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical of Saudi’s latest foray into the field, although there are a couple of reasons to be optimistic.
Of the over $2 trillion spent in the field of longevity, only 7% has been spent on individual protein targets that ultimately have the potential of producing therapeutic or rejuvenation outcomes. Should Hevolution commit its annual $1 billion allocation towards these age-related targets, it will be more than the NIH spent on these targets in the past 30+ years. Whether or not the funds will be this focussed however, is a different matter.
When Hevolution came out of stealth in June 2022, much was written about what this might mean for the sector and future commercial opportunities, generating a broad-based interest into what Hevolution is up to. Its self-described mission is to drive efforts to extend healthspan, and to better understand the processes of ageing. Only the time will tell if Hevolution will live up to expectation, but a state-backed commitment to the sector is a very important milestone for the longevity industry.
3/ Recent funding in longevity 💰
4/ Upcoming events 📅
🇧🇪 The Eurosymposium on Health Ageing is a unique biennial meeting of scientists working on the biology of ageing, and their next meeting is in Belgium, November 24-26th.
🇺🇸 The Longevity Summit will be hosting their second annual event in Novato, CA on December 7-8th. The event will unite top longevity entrepreneurs, pharma and biotech companies, longevity investors, researchers, and government organisations from around the world.
🇵🇹 Longevity Med Summit will focus on the development of ageing science, regenerative medicine, and longevity therapeutics. This two-day summit will take place in Lisbon, Portugal on May 4 - May 5, 2023 and feature five themes: Longevity Therapeutics, P4 Medicine, Diagnostics, AI and Digital, and a showcase of new trials and research.
5/ Jobs in longevity 🧑💼
Weatherwax Bio // Research Associate | Biology // San Francisco, CA
Cambrian Bio // Product Manager - Geroscience // New York, NY
Vincere Bio // In Vivo Mitochondrial Biologist // Cambridge, MA
Insilico Medicine // Business Development Consultant // Europe, Remote
Altos Labs // US general interest - UK general interest // US - UK