Longevity (2024)

Miracle gene-altering drugs, cell-reprogramming and cryogenic chambers: we don’t always associate longevity with serious scientific undertakings so much as wacky activities that the super rich do to cheat death.

Truthfully, there’s a lot of crazy attempts to reverse ageing or to find an actual “cure” for dying. But most people in the field want to improve quality of life, or the end of life, when traditional medicine hasn’t helped enough. Longevity is about understanding how our cells wear out over time and trying to reverse this and keep age-related diseases at bay. It's also about preventive care — spotting and tackling problems before they occur.

In 2023, longevity-specific startups raised $126m in Europe, a drop from the $366m the sector saw in 2022. The field includes a raft of companies promising to deliver a better gauge of health, with detailed insights into the microbiome and the immune system, among other things. Some are selling at-home test kits for a few hundred euros apiece; others are developing sophisticated treatments running into the thousands of euros.

No one has embraced longevity quite like the Silicon Valley heavyweights — techies including Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Yuri Milner and Peter Thiel have collectively spent billions on the business of living longer. If longevity sometimes feels like a luxury for the very wealthy, that’s because it often is: visiting a “cheap” longevity clinic can set you back €460 a month, while stem cell treatments can hit you for €20k.

Europe hasn’t seen massive investor splurges, though it has its longevity proponents too: German billionaire Christian Angermayer is probably the most prolific longevity backer in the region. European family offices are particularly interested in the sector too, says Phil Newman, founder of longevity investment brokerage First Longevity.

Other interested investors in Europe include Atomico and General Catalyst, which both backed Spotify billionaire Daniel Ek's latest venture, diagnostics company Neko Health, which collects patient data on the skin, the heart, vessels, respiration, inflammations and more. Pharma companies are also pushing longevity boundaries. Novo Nordisk’s diabetes treatment Ozempic — arguably the world’s most famous drug — has shown promising results for repairing DNA damage in mice, so there’s hope that it can eventually reduce the risk of many ailments.

Founders tell us death is just another problem to solve. But even as tech progresses and wallets open, there’s a lot we don’t know about ageing or how to slow it. Research still has a long way to go before it can show us that what works on mice will also work on humans.