Newlimit is a startup aimed at increasing the time when people can live healthy lives by genetically programming cells, and has raised a $130 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins.
New investors Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and Kosra Ventures also invested. Funding comes two years after the company raises a $40 million Series A.
Founded more than four years ago by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (see above), former GV partner Blake Byers and stem cell professor Jacob Kimmel, Newlimit claims to have made great strides in developing treatments that can restore youthful properties to aging cells.
Kimmel told TechCrunch that the company has discovered three prototype drugs that reprogram hepatocytes. Newlimit’s lab experiments show that this rejuvenation can restore the ability of cells to treat fats and alcohol, he said.
The company measures its progress by comparing how cells from young individuals and older people respond to substances. Older liver cells that have passed the epigenetic reprogramming of NewLimit behave like younger cells, Kimmel said.
Despite the promising early results, Newlimit is still a few years away from starting human trials.
In the meantime, the company will continue to develop new anti-aging drugs using AI models, and then hope to test the most promising drugs produced by these machines in the laboratory. “What an AI model can do is run all these experiments in a simulation and follow up only on the most promising subset,” Kimmel said, retraining the AI model in a process called “Loop Lab” using data points from the experiment.
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Other notable biotechnology startups are developing drugs aimed at extending their lifespan. Retro Biology reportedly raised $180 million from Openai CEO Sam Altman two years ago, and a $1 billion Series A. Altos Labs was launched in 2022 for $3 billion and is backed by Jeff Bezos.