Physics-Powered GenAI Biotech Gero Raises $6M to Find Root Causes of Aging and Age-Related Diseases
Funding by Melnichek Investments fuels Gero’s strategy to apply AI and real-world human health data to decode the relationship between aging and diseases, unravel their root causes, and create therapeutics to combat them
PALO ALTO, Calif., October 18, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gero, a biotechnology company focused on aging and chronic diseases, has closed $6M in a Series A extension round. This funding round positions Gero to continue internal drug development programs, grow its scientific team to boost platform technology development, and expand its US presence.
The round was led by Melnichek Investments, a Cyprus-based VC firm that seeks to improve the quality of human lives by funding and supporting promising, potentially high-impact, machine-learning startups, with the participation of VitaDAO and Leonid Lozner (co-founder NYSE: EPAM).
By applying cutting-edge generative AI tools to analyze real-world longitudinal human health data, Gero is dedicated to finding novel cures for age-related diseases. Its goal is to unravel the mysteries behind human aging and halt the aging process.
"The large health model that we have trained is instrumental in the discovery of therapies targeting aging and age-related diseases, both in-house and via collaborations with pharmaceutical companies," said Peter Fedichev, Gero co-founder and CEO. "Thanks to this recent funding from Melnichek Investments, coupled with their expertise in modern AI through backing many successful companies, we are now well positioned to accelerate our progress."
Earlier this year, Gero announced a research collaboration with Pfizer and is in discussions with other pharmaceutical companies that are evaluating age-related diseases as a growing market. The large health model developed by Gero was trained to differentiate the specific effects of aging from the effects of diseases to potentially revolutionize genetics-driven drug discovery against most common conditions.
Melnichek Investments saw great potential in Gero’s mission to gain new insights into the drivers of age-related diseases and develop new medicines that treat them. "By targeting the underlying processes of aging, Gero’s therapeutics have the potential to mitigate the burden of age-related illnesses and enhance the quality of life for individuals worldwide," said founder Yury Melnichek. "Moreover, as populations age and healthcare costs escalate, Gero’s research and development efforts offer a ray of hope for more effective and sustainable healthcare solutions."
AI technology has become a powerful ally in the therapeutic design toolset. Age-related diseases are complicated to unravel and advances will rely heavily on an understanding of extremely large data sets — far beyond the capabilities of human researchers. Gero’s work is showing the importance of that realization and the solutions that are possible," said Eleanor Davies, steward of the Longevity Science Working Group at VitaDAO, a participant in the round.
Gero is at the forefront of a growing field of medical research that suggests that aging is not an inevitable part of human existence but rather a treatable condition that can be manipulated, slowed, or even stopped using modern technology. In recent years, headlines have been made by the launch of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos-backed Altos Labs, Google parent company Alphabet-backed Calico Life Sciences, and others. The UK-based research firm Longevity.Technology estimates investment in the field reached $5.2 billion in 2022 and projects that 2023 may be even bigger.
Gero’s scientific approach has already delivered significant results
Gero was founded with the idea of halting aging by studying it from first principles in human data. Following several years of fundamental research, Gero has developed proprietary, physics-guided machine-learning frameworks to explore human biology in a bias-free way. Gero’s research has been published in several peer-reviewed science journals, including Nature Communications (1, 2, 3) and Science. Gero’s research sparked vigorous discussion among longevity experts in the scientific community when a story asserting that Humans Can Stop—But Not Fully Reverse—Aging was published in Popular Mechanics.
A separate ongoing Gero project is to develop a therapeutic, which would be instrumental in the treatment of senescence-associated diseases. This effort has resulted in one of the most robust mice rejuvenation results globally. The company’s scientific research unequivocally supports the notion that targeting the specific phenotype — the rate at which humans lose resilience — holds the key to achieving a substantial extension of health- and life-span (EurekAlert, bioRxiv).
Gero has a unique value proposition for pharmaceutical companies that are looking to identify new technology platforms for in-licensing and co-development. Gero’s drug-development platform enables target discovery against chronic age-related diseases directly in human data. Current genetics-based approaches to target discovery rarely lead to new approved therapies for chronic diseases, which are all interlinked via aging. Gero’s approach allows separating the effects of aging from the effects of diseases enabling human genetics-driven target discovery for chronic and age-related diseases.
How Gero applies AI to predict human health outcomes
Gero’s large health models (LHMs) are generative, predictive models of human health. They are functionally similar to large language models (LLMs), which are trained on massive datasets using unsupervised learning methodologies. LHMs, in contrast, are trained on newly available longitudinal human health record datasets in the same unsupervised manner, using physics-based models as guidance. The resultant LHMs are then able to predict human health outcomes.
Unlike LLMs, LHMs are fully interpretable, which means that they can provide both a prediction and an explanation for that prediction. Findings can be validated and verified for accuracy. Moreover, because Gero’s LHMs are based on real human data, the drug research and discovery process is both radically faster than traditional studies using mice or other laboratory animals and has a higher level of fidelity to actual human biology.
"Our gratitude goes out to Melnichek Investments and our other investors for their continuous support," said Gero co-founder Maxim Kholin. "Having already made significant progress in fundamental research, we are now expanding towards resource-intensive drug development projects. As we look ahead, we anticipate a new funding round in the near future, and we invite potential investors to engage in early conversations with us."
About Melnichek Investments
Melnichek Investments Ltd is a new investment company founded by tech visionaries Yury Melnichek and Anna Melnichek. The company has an ambitious goal of investing in AI startups that have the potential to change the world. Specifically, it focuses on early-stage, hi-tech IT startups in the field of computer vision and machine learning.
About Gero
GERO is a cutting-edge biotechnology company dedicated to the mission of curing age-related human diseases and understanding, slowing, and even halting the aging process itself. In addition to an ongoing partnership with Pfizer to find treatments for fibrotic diseases, Gero is pursuing a longer-term plan to double human health- and lifespan within the current generation. Gero’s research has been published in the journals Nature Communications (1, 2, 3) and Science and has been covered by Scientific American and Popular Mechanics. To learn more, visit gero.ai. To check out the latest interviews with Gero CEO Peter Fedichev click here (for video) and here (for text).
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Contacts
Media:
Tim Cox, ZingPR for Gero
tim@zingpr.com
Julia Maslennikova, 25by8 for Melnichek Investments
maslennikova@25by8.com
