In this episode of Translating Aging, host Chris Patel speaks with Sergey Jakimov, a Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur and managing partner of LongeVC, one of Europe’s most active longevity-focused venture funds. They discuss how venture capital shapes the future of aging research, what makes longevity companies investable, and why pragmatic approaches are key to advancing the field.

Key Points:

Venture capital is helping shape longevity by funding pragmatic, disease-focused biotech innovations. For investors like LongeVC, the path to longer healthspan lies in translating science into investable therapies.

• From Entrepreneur to Investor: Sergey shares his journey from founding deep tech and life science startups to co-founding LongeVC, driven by personal experiences with age-related diseases and his own health challenges.
• Longevity as a Market Opportunity: He stresses that aging affects everyone, making it the world’s most valuable industry. For LongeVC, longevity means targeting healthspan through convergence of biotech, AI, regenerative medicine, and engineering.
• Disease-Centered Investment: Unlike some who aim to “cure aging” directly, LongeVC prioritizes investing in therapies that modify age-related diseases (e.g., neurodegeneration, oncology, cardiovascular), building the longevity puzzle piece by piece.
• What Investors Look For: A strong disease indication, clear regulatory pathway, robust intellectual property, and a balanced team of scientists and entrepreneurs are critical for securing VC funding.
• US vs. Europe in IP Transfer: Jakimov notes major differences between US and European ecosystems, with US institutions (e.g., Stanford, MIT, Berkeley) far ahead in tech transfer practices that make startups more investable.
• Platforms and AI in Longevity: For drug discovery platforms, having a proprietary pipeline is essential. Service-only models are less attractive to investors compared to those that pair technology with their own promising assets.