In this interview, Boyang Wang of Immortal Dragons discusses the kinds of projects he wants to fund, ways in which the industry can be encouraged to develop, relationships between the East and West in longevity research and development, and what got him involved in longevity.
Hello, and welcome to this Lifespan interview, where today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Boyang Wang, who is the founder of Immortal Dragons, a fund operating in the longevity research space in Singapore. Can you start, Boyang, by describing yourself a bit? How did you get into this field, and what led you into founding Immortal Dragons?
Thanks for having me, Keith. This is Boyang, I’m the founder of Immortal Dragons, a purpose-driven longevity fund. We invest in longevity biotech, life extension projects beyond conventional capital investments; we also do advocacy work like translating and publishing books. We do podcasts in Chinese for the Chinese longevity community. We do sponsorship and grants for organizations and events, all to further the research and advancement of the sector.
What got me into longevity? This is actually a recurring theme; it’s not only that I’ve been thinking about why we must age and die, I never figured out the puzzle of existence or consciousness, so I feel like we need more time to think this through. It’s fundamental to extend lifespan and healthspan so that we have more time to figure out the meaning of life, to do whatever you want, to achieve our goals. Also, there is a theme of survival. I’ve had interesting encounters with the healthcare system. I’ve had interesting medical conditions since I was young, so I’ve always witnessed firsthand the limitations and, of course, the marvels of our modern healthcare system, so it’s very natural for me to work on longevity.
It definitely sounds like you have a lot of reasons for entering this field and a lot of passion. Picking up on that point, Immortal Dragons is described as a purpose-driven fund focused on life extension, prioritizing impact over economic returns. How is this different from other funds?
We say we are a purpose-driven fund, and the key implication is that Immortal Dragons values impact over economic returns. This is a more rational, more concrete concept than it sounds; when we say we do not prioritize economic returns, it is pretty practical. I’m coming from a tech entrepreneur background, so I’m not from a biomedical background. If I wanted to maximize economic return, I should have been investing in technology or things that I’m more familiar with, the computer science-related tech sector.
I’m investing in the field of longevity because I want to see things happening: I want to see progress and breakthroughs in the sector. When we make investments, we are less focused on the potential economic returns. For example, if we wanted to invest in a pharma company that could make the most money for us, we might not do a good job, because this is the game that big pharma companies are playing, and they know their games. Rather, we invest in companies that might be working on cutting-edge, moonshot, high-risk technologies that are probably very meaningful for the sector but might not bring the most economic returns.
How do you measure this? Is there a formal, codified investment thesis, where you quantify impact versus economic returns and weigh those things when you’re looking at an investment? Is it more of a feeling based on your due diligence, or are there specific impact metrics that you look at?
Quantifying impact is not easy, but we do have some working themes that we are focused on, such as replacement. We feel like replacement, not repair, is an interesting direction as an anti-aging strategy. There are recent papers on it that we draw this analogy from. One comparison is electrical engineering, where it’s hard to fix a smartphone; if you smash it, even the best engineers might have a hard time fixing the chips and the screen LED, but what the engineers would do is replace the screen, the motherboard, and so on.
In terms of biology, we see replacement as a very promising direction for intervention, so we look at xenotransplant companies. We look at companies that work on cryopreservation, which is related to transplantation. We look at companies that work on 3D bioprinting for tissues and human organs ex vivo, and we even look at companies that work on whole-body replacement. This is one of the working themes, and we then measure the rarity, the importance of the work, to hopefully partially quantify the impact of the investment.
Are there other factors that determine what you might fund? For example, if there was a therapy that was more repair than replacement, are there other elements of a potential project that would bring it into the sphere of things that you might fund? Is anybody else focusing on rarity? You mentioned evangelism in the past; is the ability for a project to inspire the public something that you might factor into potential impact?
Indeed, if there’s a deal that is highly sought after, then we will probably not be so keen to make an investment, because there will be plenty of capital and resources flowing into the project. Rather, if we see a project that’s unique and important, a puzzzle piece that is not getting the required funding, we’ll be more interested in it. If there’s a project that can hopefully inspire the public or at least inspire a few mission-aligned groups of people, that is also interesting for us.
Is this affected by the different kinds of systems in the body? For example, replacement might be a more challenging strategy to pursue in terms of neuroscience. Do you have neuroscience projects that you’re looking to fund as well, or is that something that’s deprioritized? Are you looking at other modalities involved in the neuroscience side of things, because I imagine it’s a little bit more difficult to replace your brain?
Yes, absolutely. The brain is tied to the very existence of our being, so it’s more tricky. When it comes to the brain and neuroscience, we look at other modalities. We look at companies that are working on nurturing brain tissue and then transplanting that created tissue into your brain and integrating it into your existing systems. Hopefully, that will enhance and rejuvenate your brain tissue and your nervous system rather than replacing it. In this area, we look at other modalities more of a gradual enhancement, but when it comes to other body parts, we are more interested in the replacement strategy.
That intersects with some work that the ARPA-H is doing with Jean Hébert’s project. Do you look at any other programs like ARPA-H for inspiration or guidance to see what other funds or other governmental agencies are looking to fund, and is that something that gives you an indication of what you would like to explore or is that something that you would rather deprioritize, because you feel like they are taking care of that side of things?
We are certainly interested in what public sector or other organizations might be sponsoring, ARPA-H being one. Of course, there’s XPRIZE. There are the Middle East, MENA countries, where sovereign funds are looking to fund such efforts as well. We are based in Singapore, so we also see that there have been some initiatives from the Singaporean government and universities. We have the first longevity research center set up in Singapore by the National University of Singapore headed by Professor Brian Kennedy, which has been around for a few years. These are great initiatives.
We have communications with them, but government agencies often have the mission of advancing public health, so they really look at things that improve lifespan on average and impact a large proportion of the population, such as diabetes, metabolic diseases, and neurodegenerative cardiovascular diseases.
I feel like nimble and independent organizations like ours have the responsibility to work on the cutting edge. Instead of improving the average life expectancy, we want to set an example and inspire the sector by making a few people live to 120 or 150. One example would be Larry Ellison. He’s apparently pretty successful, at least seemingly in his anti-aging and longevity effort, in inspiring high-net-worth individuals by showing his achievements and so putting resources to work on this sector.
You’re saying that if you could succeed in having a few significant outliers, that will serve as a powerful signal to the world to say “Hey, we can actually get gains here”, and that would catalyze more funding.
Yes, absolutely. We believe in the power of role models. After the Wright Brothers, there are so many who succeeded in creating powered aircraft; after Tesla, there are so many companies who successfully built very good electric vehicles. The power of role models is invaluable.
Have you received any kind of challenges on that sort of thesis, by people saying “Hey, you should really be working on doing that sort of blanket minimum median raising as opposed to this”? Or, does everyone that you’ve interacted with understand the points that you’ve just made?
The field of longevity can be controversial at times. There are actually criticisms coming from different perspectives, one being that everything that we’re talking about is pretty far-fetched if not pseudoscience. When you talk about creating organs or organoids that will be usable for humans, or you talk about therapeutic plasma exchange, which is also a replacement strategy, many coming from a more traditional background would totally oppose it. There are other times when it’s criticized for being unrealistic or unhelpful for the general public, who might benefit more from statin dosage for their cardiovascular health or less sugar intake. There’s criticism from all different perspectives, but to work on something that’s controversial will be meaningful. If there’s an aligned interest, if there’s already consensus, then it’s more suitable for bigger organizations than a small fund like us.
Given that you’re approaching this from the perspective of moonshots like this, can you speak more about the thesis of being focused on impact more than economic returns, and how does that inform your team? Does everybody feel the same? What is the structure of the fund. What’s your team size, and how many investments have you made?
We are a 40 million AUM fund. Our structure is a bit special in that we are more of a CVC, a corporate VC structure. We only have one external LP, and the majority of our fund is coming from our previous businesses, so we have total flexibility in terms of making investments. We don’t have a stringent LP mandate; we don’t need to call capital, we have our capital ready.
We have five or six teammates who are working full time on our fund. There’s also departments like finance, legal, and human resources, that we share with our larger group of companies. We’ve been investing as an organization for almost two years by now. We have funded more than 10 investment projects so far, and we deployed a few million US dollars. We plan to continue or accelerate as we see more breakthroughs and progress in the sector.
What are your thoughts on the current funding landscape in general? Instead of simply being an LP for other funds, why did you choose to do this yourself? What are the biggest gaps or unmet needs in the field that you hope Immortal Dragons will address?
We do also invest in other funds as an LP, but the reason why I have to work on it myself is because this mission is very important to me, and I have to work on it full time rather than just sit on the sideline and watch others work on it.
We feel like there’s definitely not enough attention, resources, or talent. Everything in this direction is so fundamental, so important, and yet it’s not getting the kind of attention that it deserves. Partially, we feel that he reason is complicated. There’s a mentality shift required, where people have internalized the idea of aging and death. There is an economic flywheel that’s not there yet.
For the past many decades, investing in anti-aging has been a not-so-fruitful endeavor, but we believe it’s now at an inflection point. There is also a moral implication in that the argument for longevity and anti-aging is not established, especially not for the general public, and thought leaders have been working on this as well. Notably, Nick Bostrom is a philosopher influential in this area, and he has famously written The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant to address many of the moral arguments around anti-aging, longevity, and longer lifespans. We also translated the book The Case Against Death by Patrick Linden into Chinese and published it in the Chinese market. It’s also a pretty compelling and comprehensive discussion on the morality of longevity. So many of these need to be addressed, and investors need to see returns, and we need to make our voice heard to move the needle and turn the tide.
On that subject, there’s obviously a lot of different steps in the pipeline of realizing healthspan-extending technologies. There’s the research itself, there’s government issues and funding, there’s the ecosystem of investment, and there’s public sentiment. Are any of these a critical bottleneck that needs addressing, or is it an all-of-the-above strategy?
It’s not easy to find the one key factor that’s the most important, and that’s why, from Immortal Dragons’ perspective, we try to work on a few of these factors. We look at the economic flywheel. Currently, it’s not very attractive to fund longevity projects or work on them because there’s fewer success stories, for founders, for large investors, and for the general public to invest in. We are looking to help; we’re really looking forward for a wave of longevity and anti-aging companies to reach a turning point where they get publicly listed, they will generate returns for retail investors in the public market, and that will be a powerful motivational incentive for more people to invest in and to turn the tide.
We don’t emphasize economic return as a fund, but as a mechanism, it’s really one of the most powerful: capitalist, free market return on investment is the most important motivational incentive structures that we have discovered to push the sector further. We have seen this kind of hyper growth in the tech sector in the last few decades. If this can happen in longevity, in anti-aging, that will really accelerate its development.
Is there any room in the fund to support or invest in projects that aren’t strictly biotechnology? For example, there’s a movie project to make Fable of the Dragon Tyrant; that went through our Longevity Investor Network by Protostellar Media, for example. There’s also a Dragon Tyrant blockchain game that’s being built by SkillCap that is working with the Lifespan Research Institute. Would you ever consider funding projects like this that are not biotechnology but related to the overall goal of potential economic return and inspiring the public?
These are very interesting projects, and this kind of effort will be a perfect candidate for sponsorship or grants by Immortal Dragons. We are one of the early major sponsors of Vitalist Bay, and we’re happy to see the team pulled off a pop-up city/conference that attracted the best minds in the sector and individuals from all over the world, and some of them might be new to longevity. That would be a better candidate for sponsorship or grants instead of equity investment.
Can you explain a little bit more about what that looks like operationally? Is there like a separate tranche of funding within the fund that’s allocated for grants, or is it like a separate granting mechanism that functions somehow alongside the primary fund?
We are pretty flexible, so we make decisions as they come. There’s no strict division of the fund into a sponsorship tranche and an equity investment tranche. In general, the ticket size for sponsorship will be less than then an investment check. 50,000-ish is the maximum we go to for sponsorship grants so far, but we are flexible, and we will evaluate projects as they come. Interested parties can approach us: our website is ID.life, and [email protected] is the email address where proposals can be sent.
Got it, and speaking of your website, I noticed that there’s you have a project focused on visualizing digital twins on the website. Is the aim of this type of work evangelism-related as well or purely scientific in nature?
This is another demonstration of how our fund is slightly different. We do such a collaborative project with researchers and other companies when we feel that there’s a value proposition and when we feel that there’s an area where we can contribute. Our team is pretty strong in computer graphics, in 3D modeling, so we created this digital twin project where the functionality is to visualize organs, different systems that vessels, neurons, muscle, skeletal structures, especially it will highlight any issue that there might be in the body.
The purpose of this system is multifold; for many who are not coming from biomedical backgrounds, they probably have not seen such a model of themselves, so it’s interesting for them to explore and enhance their understanding of their bodies. According to some clinics that we talk to, this is a valuable tool to keep clients compliant with doctors’ prescriptions, because the moment they step out from the clinic, the connection between patients and doctors can become pretty weak. We are still exploring the possible collaborations and use cases for this system. We probably will open source this soon, when it reaches a certain maturity level. Right now, it’s just our research project.
If patients can see what a healthier version of themselves will look like if they comply with the specific therapy, that will induce them to be more compliant?
We want this to serve as a motivational tool for clients, so they can see a healthier version of themselves already in the system, which drives the patients to work towards that goal.
That kind of technology can intersect with the notion of digital biomarkers, technologies that might be able to non-invasively scan your face, your walking gait, your voice. Are you invested or interested in any such projects? You mentioned the NUS earlier, and I believe some of these technologies and approaches might be of interest to the groups working there.
We have seen a few products that are already out in the market that non-invasively detect biomarkers with pretty high precision and accuracy. So far, we have not invested in this direction. We feel like this is probably more of a improvement over the technology we already have. It’s good to have, but it’s not screaming for investment, and it’s less of a moonshot, but we find it to be meaningful. There are other funds out there interested in such projects.
Just an observation, the traditional blood drawing process has been improved a lot. There are currently gadgets that can draw your blood pretty painlessly. There is also continuous glucose monitoring that is pretty much painless. The progress in this direction seems to be pretty good.
In the past, you’ve spoken about connecting Eastern and Western longevity communities. What do you see as the most significant benefits of East-West collaboration, and what practical steps is Immortal Dragons taking to bridge these ecosystems?
There are many areas where collaborations can happen between the East and the West. I can at least think of four possible directions, one being capital. There’s an enormous amount of wealth generated in the East with economic development and progress in the past few decades.
In bioscience, we’ve already seen plenty of progress made by Eastern researchers and scientists. Without naming a comprehensive list, there’s Professor Yamanaka, who received a Nobel Prize for his iPSC research. There is one Chinese-American scientist, Zhang Feng, who is a pioneer in CRISPR and gene editing. In terms of cloning for mammals and primates, Eastern researchers and scientists are also pretty advanced and have been doing interesting work in the past years. In xenotransplants, both China and the US are leaders in this area. These researchers write in English, they publish in Cell and Nature, but there’s still gaps at times.
Clinical trials and research efforts are pretty expensive and sometimes are hard to organize in some developed countries due to strict regulations and probably bureaucracy and red tape, and that is one area where some Asian countries are more flexible.
With a huge population in the East, there comes market size and market potential. These are all areas where the East and West can collaborate. We feel like such collaboration is not as much as we want it to be, especially in the current geopolitical climate with more bridges getting burnt down. For some organizations and individuals, making that connection is even more important than before.
You’ve also noted in the past that Eastern cultures may be more conceptually open to life extension. How do you see such potential differences in cultural attitudes influencing things like regulatory environments, patient adoption, or investment trends in Asia versus the West?
That’s an interesting topic. Of course, there is criticism, there are people arguing against the idea of longevity, both in the West and the East. These concerns are coming from different angles. In the West, there is a strong religious influence such that there’s worry about playing God and “We probably shouldn’t linger too much on this life but rather live the best life and then go to heaven.” I’m not an expert on theology or these theories, but that’s the cultural connotation that I felt.
Whereas in the East, there’s less of a religious concern but a more practical concern that it might only be for the rich and about the problems that can come from longer lifespan, like limited resources. Societal classes might freeze once you give longer lifespans and healthspans to those who already have resources. There are different issues to be addressed, but I feel like Eastern cultures are more receptive to the idea of longevity. There is a tradition in Taoism, from emperors in history that have pursued longer lives, of course failed attempts, but such an idea has been there all the time. I would say that they’re at least more open to the idea that it’s not unfathomable to think of a future of our civilization where people can live and work for up to a few hundred years and that we’ll be able to achieve great things with our longer lifespans, like traveling to other planets.
I’m assuming that you haven’t imbibed mercury like certain Chinese emperors of legend, but you have personally undergone procedures such as follistatin gene therapy and tissue banking. Would you say that these experiences relate in any way to your investment thesis in terms of risk tolerance, for example?
These are personal attempts, not exactly tied to the fund, but this does reflect on some ideas of risk profile, things that we feel are promising and the actions we think need to be taken. Prototype gene therapy, for example, is experimental. To say that a gene therapy is traditional is a bit weird, because this is a new field, but gene therapies are generally used for very serious medical conditions and are carried by a virus factor, a lentivirus or AAV, and this is often irreversible. The kind of gene therapy that I received is more for general health or anti-aging purposes instead of treating an immediate condition. It is carried by a nanolipid, or in my case, a PEI polymer, which is not as transmittable: it will not go to all my cells and will not be inherited. It’s a one-off shot that will gradually die out.
Many experts in the field are pretty against such a gene therapy, criticizing its efficacy, but they also agree that the possibility for an adverse event is also low because of its low dosage and low efficacy. From my perspective, I feel like this is definitely an early mover in creating gene therapy that’s more transient and more for a larger audience. I want to support the cause. I want to make the pioneers of longevity biotech make money, so that with their role model, there will be more companies that work on this. If you feel like this gene therapy is not efficacious or you feel like this technology isn’t good enough, why not build a company and develop a better therapy? After all, they’re charging a high price, but they also already see some traction.
There are people such as Brian Johnson, who publicly stated that he received a gene therapy, so there’s definitely a market for it. Why not iterate and produce a better product? We want to see such an economic flywheel to attract more resources and talent, so my follistatin gene therapy is also a signal. I don’t believe it had much of a noticeable effect on me, but fortunately, there’s also no side effect or adverse event.
You’ve expressed both enthusiasm and caution about AI’s role in longevity. What specific intersections between those two areas are you most excited about, and what do you think are the greatest risks?
AI is a big trend and is influencing everything that we do; there are a few interesting directions, and there are companies already exploring those. There’s AI drug discovery for smaller molecules as well as biologics. There’s a idea of an AI doctor that can commoditize diagnosis and medical advice to an unprecedented level. There are also worries about hallucination and accountability that an AI doctor really cannot provide at the moment. There are ideas about a clinical intelligence system where AI could really assist a doctor to make a diagnosis and medical decisions, and we can imagine how AI might be more comprehensively knowledgeable than our imperfect but marvelous biological brain, so they can work hand in hand.
These are all very interesting directions, and we feel like funds both from the tech sector and from the pharma or biotech sector are interested in such projects. I would say there’s no better time to start a company, to work on longevity. You have AI at your disposal, you have biotech and longevity research at an inflection point, and more capital, talents, attention, and resources will be drawn into the field.
On your LinkedIn, I noticed that you are a gamer and a dev, and your background is in computer science and being a tech entrepreneur. How do you think that background in other fields has shaped your approach to investing in longevity? Would you say this is a challenge, an advantage, or both?
I’ve been a hardcore gamer growing up, and I do feel that such experiences shaped my work and my perspective in many things. When I was very young, I got my first Game Boy, and then I started to play games like Pokemon. In the first few generations of Pokemon, there are glitches that you can exploit to catch a very rare Pokemon and so on. At first, I didn’t believe in such wild rumors, like you first need to smash your game cassette a few times and blow on it, then you can catch Mew or Mewtwo.
These glitches are real, because at that time, developers had limited RAM space to cram in the data. You can make the game behave unexpectedly to catch the Pokemon you want or duplicate important items in game, and that was a big shock to the young version of myself. I didn’t believe it could be real, but understanding that it is real gave me a sense of believing that we can achieve things.
The world that we live in, a simulation or not, is just another very realistic, very complicated game. It is not without glitches; it all works by code or by some law that we shall discover and conquer in order to make great things happen. We can make advanced science happen that is indistinguishable from magic. That probably gave me the idea that both the game world and the real world are malleable places.
What drives you personally for this mission? You mentioned earlier the various ways in which you’re passionate for this, but is there anything specific that you attribute this passion to? What’s your ‘why’?
Other things are limited: if you have a goal in life, you achieve the goal, and then the prince and the princess live happily ever after. However, at the end of the day, life extension is an infinite game that we might not win immediately. There’s a possibility that we do not win the game in this generation, but we will pass on this torch, and you either win the game and stay in the game or die trying. This gives me motivation to work on this every day. I just want to see how much we can push the boundary. This makes the work that we are working on pretty unique.
Great. Thank you for sharing, Boyang, and thanks for joining us in this Lifespan interview.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
