Investors Bet $110 M This Startup Can Help Cure Aging

Drugs that potentially could purge the body of so-called senescent cells — thought to play a role in aging — helped Peninsula company snare a $116 million Series B round from a wide range of investors, including Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ investment arm.

Unity Biotechnology, which also named biotech veteran Keith Leonard as CEO, plans to use the cash to take its drugs to prevent, halt or reverse diseases of aging into the clinic over the next 12 to 18 months. Its lead programs are in osteoarthritis and eye diseases.

The Brisbane company is part of a growing lineup of companies, including South San Francisco-based, Google-backed Calico Life Sciences, trying to roll back the cellular clock as new science advances and baby boomers continue to age.

Unity focuses on what it calls “synolytic medicines,” drugs that zero in on cells that, after they stop dividing, secrete proteins believed to damage nearby healthy tissue. The result is inflammation and the onset of diseases such as cancers, osteoarthritis and glaucoma.

The company’s scientific founders are Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jan van Deursen of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Daohong Zhou at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

In fact, Campisi and van Deursen published a paper in the journal Science that describes the role senescent cells play in atherosclerosis, or plaque building up in the arteries. In animals, they said, selectively eliminating those cells stops plaque from accumulating, reduces inflammation and changes the makeup of higher-risk lesions.

Now Unity must push its compounds into the clinic to show that its experimental treatments actually will work in humans.

“We believe that we have line of sight to slow, halt or even reverse numerous diseases of aging, and we look forward to starting clinical trials with our first drug candidates in the near future,” Unity Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jamie Dananberg said in a press release.

The work apparently caught the eye of Arch Venture Partners, U.K. investment manager Baillie Gifford ( which earlier this year invested in the $130 million Series B round for South San Francisco neuroscience startup Denali Therapeutics Inc.), crossover investor Fidelity Management and Research Co., Partner Fund Management LP and Venrock.

Other investors in the round were Bezos Expeditions and existing investors WuXi PharmaTech and Mayo Clinic Ventures.

Meanwhile, Unity said it hired Keith Leonard, most recently CEO of Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, which late last year was bought by Allergan plc for $2.1 billion. Leonard replaces Nathaniel “Ned” David, his Kythera cofounder, who assembled Unity’s initial cash from Arch, Venrock, Wuxi and Mayo and will become Unity’s president.

Source: San Francisco Business Times, Ron Leuty
Photo: Keith Leonard is the new CEO of “senolytic medicines” company Unity Biotechnology.