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California, USA
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A new wave of biotechnology startups are changing the paradigm on aging, disease, and human lifespan.
Where science
meets mission.
Deep Expertise
A decade of combined experience in longevity biotech investment and company creation.
Network
Unparalleled network of collaborators, advisors, founders in longevity biotechnology.
Diversified Approach
Invest a diversified portfolio of longevity biotech companies covering a range of approaches and modalities.
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Simple and Accessible
Healthspan Capital's rolling fund lets investors start investing in longevity in a way that's simple and flexible -- all through AngelList.
Portfolio
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Founders
Nathan Cheng
General Partner
Nathan Cheng is the Program Director of the On Deck Longevity Biotech and the Longevity Biotech Fellowship. He is also the founder of Longevity Marketcap, the most widely read newsletter on investing in longevity, Longevity List, and the host of The Longevity Biotech Show podcast.
Nathan obtained his Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Toronto. He was awarded both CGS-Masters and CGS-Doctoral graduate scholarships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Sebastian Brunemeier
General Partner
Sebastian Brunemeier is the CEO of ImmuneAGE, a co-founder of Cambrian Biopharma and former Principal at Apollo Health Ventures. He was also founder of Samsara Therapeutics, Cyclone Therapeutics, and advisor to several other biotech companies.
Sebastian was a Fulbright Fellow in the biology of aging at the Gulbenkian Institute, awarded the Skaggs-Oxford fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute, and a SENS Foundation Scholar at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He was in the DPhil (PhD) program at Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar focusing on the biochemistry of aging, and completed a dual MSc in Life Science Business Management and Molecular Neuroscience from the University of Amsterdam as an Amsterdam Excellence Scholar.
Michael Chinen
General Partner
Michael Chinen is a software engineer, machine learning researcher, and angel investor. He currently works at Google with an interest in audio, after working in startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, and at several tech companies including Microsoft, Dolby, and Adobe.
Michael also worked on DNA sequence alignment software for the Thomas lab in the Genome Science department at the University of Washington, which sparked his interest in biology and aging. Upon receiving his Master’s degree from Dartmouth College, Michael was a Fulbright scholar at the Technical University of Berlin.
Advisory Board
Prof. Matt Kaeberlein
Advisor
Prof Matt Kaeberlein, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of Washington focused on the basic biology of aging. Matt is an expert on mTOR and rapamycin biology. He works with C elegans and yeast genetics to understand the fundamental mechanisms of aging. He is currently also CEO of the American Aging Association, the largest academic aging organization in the US. He is co-Director of the University of Washington Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, and the director of the Dog Aging Project to test rapamycin in companion dogs.
Dr. Kaeberlein has been recognized with several awards, including a Breakthroughs in Gerontology Award from the Glenn Foundation, an Alzheimer’s Association Young Investigator Award, an Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Award, an Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year Award, and a Murdock Trust Award. In 2011, he was named the Vincent Cristofalo Rising Star in Aging Research by the American Federation for Aging Research and appointed as a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and in 2012 he joined the Board of Directors of the American Aging Association.
Dr. Kaeberlein currently serves on the editorial boards for Science, eLife, Aging Cell, Cell Cycle, PloS One, Frontiers in Genetics of Aging, BMC Longevity and Healthspan, F1000 Research, Ageing Research Reviews, and BioEssays. He holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and undergrad degrees in mathematics and biochemistry from Western Washington University.
Prof. Claes Wahlestedt
Advisor
Claes Wahlestedt, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor and Director of the Center for Therapeutic Innovation at the University of Miami where he also serves as Associate Dean for Therapeutic Innovation. A native of Sweden,
Dr. Wahlestedt obtained his MD and PhD degrees from Lund University. Prior to joining the University of Miami, Dr. Wahlestedt was a founding professor and director of neuroscience at The Scripps Research Institute’s Florida campus. Before that he was an endowed professor, founding genome center director and department chair at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He has also been a faculty member at Cornell University Medical College and at McGill University.
He has also directed R&D for AstraZeneca and Pharmacia/Pfizer for over a decade. In recent years, he has co-founded several biotechnology companies.
Dr. Wahlestedt’s own lab focuses on drug discovery, genomics, and epigenetics. He has extensive experience with most therapeutic modalities, in particular small molecules and oligonucleotides, across all major therapeutic areas.
Josef Christensen
Advisor
Josef Christensen is Global Commercial Associate Director for Stem Cell Therapies at Novo Nordisk. He previously spent 5 years at McKinsey & Company focusing on pharmaceutical strategy consulting in Europe and the US.
He was a Partner at Apollo Health Ventures, the first and largest LongBio-focused venture capital fund and company builder in the world. He conducted his doctoral training at the Stem Cell Institute of Harvard University (focused on muscle stem cells) and the University of Copenhagen. He also holds an MSc and BSc in Molecular Biomedicine, a 6 year program at the University of Copenhagen, where he also conducted research for Novo Nordisk.
Vera Gorbunova
Advisor
Vera Gorbunova is an endowed Professor of Biology and Medicine at the University of Rochester and a co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center. Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of longevity and on the studies of exceptionally long-lived mammals.
Dr. Gorbunova pioneered comparative biology approach to study aging. She elucidated the mechanisms that control evolution of tumor suppressor mechanisms. She uncovered the function of the longevity gene Sirtuin 6 in regulating genome stability across species. She demonstrated the role of transposable elements in driving age-related inflammation.
Her work received awards of from the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Glenn Foundation, AFAR, and NIH. Her work was recognized by the Cozzarelli Prize from PNAS, prize for research on aging from ADPS/Alianz, France, Prince Hitachi Prize in Comparative Oncology, Japan and Davey Prize from Wilmot Cancer Center.
Dan Catron
Advisor
Dan Catron is Executive Director of BD at Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals in San Diego, California. He has served as Executive Director of Tech Transfer at the Scintillon Institute, and Director of the OTD at the Scripps Research Institute, where he also taught the “Business of Biotechnology” course.
He was a senior licensing associate at the University of Miami, where he executed the largest licensing deal in Florida ($800M). He was a clinical research associate at IQVIA (Quintiles), VP of R&D at Novelios Pharmaceuticals, research scientist at the DNAX Research Institute (a subsidiary of Schering-Plough, later acquired by Merck), founded by Stanford professor and Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg. Prior to that, he was a clinical trial coordinator at Stanford in the department of Ophthalmology.
He holds an MS in Genetics and Genomics from Duke, a BS from Santa Clara University, and an MBA from the University of Miami.
Michael J. Parnham
Advisor
Michael Parnham is CSO of EpiEndo Pharmaceuticals. He has extensive experience in immunology and was previously Head of the Department of Translational Drug Validation in the Fraunhofer Institute of Molecular Biology and is Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology at Goethe University Frankfurt. He has helped discover and develop six compounds up to clinical trials, including two novel biologicals and the seleno-organic compound, ebselen, for which he and his group received the Galenus-von Pergamon Prize Germany in 1990.
In 2015, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Association of Inflammation Societies. Prior to the Fraunhofer Institute, Michael was Director of Preclinical Discovery at GlaxoSmithKline, Head of Pharmacology & Toxicology at PLIVA, Zagreb and head of Biology at subsequently Rhône-Poulenc Santé.
He received his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Bristol and performed his postdoc at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is a fellow of the British Pharmacological Society and co-inventor on twenty-four patents.
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Jack Scannell
Advisor
Dr Jack Scannell’s career spans neuroscience, drug discovery, consulting, and biopharma investment. He is CEO of Unify Pharmaceuticals which is developing fullerene-based chemistry in a range of neuroprotective applications. His prior consulting and academic work focused on the ability of disease models to predict clinical outcomes in patients; a focus that developed from his long term interest in the technological and economic history of biomedical innovation. He coined the term “Eroom’s Law” to contrast the exponential decline in biopharmaceutical R&D productivity between 1950 and 2010 with the more familiar Moore’s Law, which described the exponential increase in computing power over a similar period. “Eroom” is “Moore” backwards.
Jack was Co-Head of European Pharmaceuticals and Biotech at UBS Investment Research and Head of European Healthcare at Sanford Bernstein. He led Discovery Biology at E-Therapeutics PLC, an Oxford-based biotech firm. He started his commercial career at the Boston Consulting Group. Before that, he was an academic neuroscientist. He has a D.Phil. in Physiology (Neuroscience) from Oxford and a Batchelor’s degree in Medical Sciences from Cambridge.
Venture Fellows
Boyang Wang
Senior Venture Fellow
Boyang is the founding partner at Immortal Dragons, a purpose-driven longevity fund. Boyang has been guest speaker at longevity conferences (1), (2) and podcasts. He was one of the first 300 recipients of Minicircle's Follistatin Gene Therapy.
Boyang previously founded P12, that raised from Primavera, one of the biggest Private Equity in Hong Kong. He grew P12 to a 300m USD valuation and 10m+ USD annual net profit, making P12 the most successful gaming infrastructure company in Southeast Asia.
Boyang received Computer Science education from National University of Singapore and Yale University.
Paolo Binetti
Venture Fellow
Paolo is currently an On Deck Longevity Biotech fellow, he is active in VitaDAO, a collective funding early-stage longevity research, and reviews startups for Capital Cell, the first biotech crowd equity in Europe. He is also an investor, focusing on high-impact theses such as healthcare and green technologies. Paolo holds a PhD in Controls, Robotics, and Bioengineering as well as a Bioinformatics specialization. He published several papers, ranging from aerospace to the biology of aging. Paolo has a 20-year industry experience in R&D project management and business development.
Brianah McCoy
Venture Fellow
Bri is currently a 3rd year Molcular and Cellular Biology PhD student at Arizona State University studying the biology of aging in the immune system using the companion dog. Bri’s work leverages multi-omic approaches, non-traditional models of aging, and computational methods to understand how the environment modifies age-related immune diseases. Bri is also involved in the longevity biotech space as a member of the On Deck Longevity Biotech fellowship.
Colin Maraganore
Venture Fellow
Colin is the COO of Longaevus Technologies, the Head of Business Development for Rejuvenation Technologies, and a Project Manager at Acelot. Additionally, Colin is a member of On Deck's Longevity Biotech and consults for multiple aging startups. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in Psychology and Neuroscience, Colin has worked for multiple early-stage Silicon Valley biotechs, including BioAge, Earli, and Vium (now Recursion). A Translational Biologist turned Operational, Strategic, and Business specialist, Colin has spent the last five years mastering skills in and outside of the lab within aging, diagnostics, and big data biotech startups.
Ryan Spangler
Venture Fellow
Ryan is a biomedical scientist and operator with over 7 years experience in R&D and Biotech. He has worked at top institutes such as the National Institutes on Aging, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and two early stage neurodegenerative disease start ups. He is a co-author on 6 peer reviewed publications and an inventor on 4 patents.He holds a B.S. in biology, magna cum laude, from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.
Nelly Weiser
Venture Fellow
Nelly currently works as Strategy and Operations Lead at a CRISPR focused start-up based in Boston, MA. She’s also a member of On Deck Longevity Biotech. Previously, Nelly worked as part of the Synthetic Gene Regulation team at Earli Inc., a biotechnology company focused on early cancer detection. Nelly earned her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University where her Master’s project in Dr. Ahmad Khalil’s lab focused on developing a synthetic sensor/actuator system to detect and clear the intracellular protein aggregates implicated in several neurodegenerative diseases. Nelly’s interest in the biology of aging began as an undergraduate at Stanford where she studied Science,Technology, and Society with a concentration in Biotechnology. She was also a founding member and Co-President of Biome, a biomaker organization affiliated with the Stanford iGEM team, which primarily focuses on helping students develop independent bioengineering projects.
Longevity biotech industry at a glance
$3B+
Capital inflow in 2021
140+
companies
$30B
Total market capitalization
Ready to invest in longevity?
Healthspan Capital Rolling Fund is a simple, flexible, and diversified way to invest in the growing longevity biotech sector. Start investing today.
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