Key points from article :
In a recent press-release, biotech startup NewLimit announced it has secured $40 million in Series A funding from Dimension Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, and several high-profile individual investors. This new investment is in addition to the initial $110 million commitment from the founders, aiming to keep the team small and focused.
The company, which aims to cure aging, works on uncovering sets of transcription factors that can epigenetically reprogram cells to treat aging and prevent related diseases. NewLimit acknowledges the risk in funding transformative companies and appreciates its investors' belief in their approach to aging research.
TechCrunch spoke with two of the companies’ four co-founders - Brian Armstrong and Blake Byers.
BB: we think that epigenetics alone is a major contributing driver to aging.
BB: For right now, it’s a very basic, research-stage company... and we’re starting with an immune cell called T cells.
BB: now we have to generate the data ourselves to improve the [machine learning] models ... by running over-expression experiments ... with 100 different transcription factors, then with combinations of different transcription factors.
There are 10 to the power of 10 combinations of five transcription factors out of the 1,700 in the human body.
BA: So in an ideal world here in the future, there’s a way for us, our bodies and our minds, to stay young.
