Earlier this year, the Y Combinator (YC) community showed interest in supporting biotechnology focused on healthspan and age-related disease. The YC community is an influential part of the Bay Area technology-focused industry in California. It was great to hear that it was planning to support biotech startups working on aging through its YC Bio program.
The first area we’re going to focus on is healthspan and age-related disease—we think there’s an enormous opportunity to help people live healthier for longer, and that it could be one of the best ways to address our healthcare crisis.
YC Bio launches in June with lab space for biotech startups
The YC Bio program has started to move forward with an announcement that from June, the bio companies will all have access space at Bonneville Labs.
The state-of-the-art facilities at Bonneville are kitted out with all the equipment to conduct chemistry as well as molecular and microbiological work, including tissue culture and biosafety level 2 capabilities. The lab space also includes operational support facilities and is essentially everything a fledgling biotech company needs to get started.
Companies accepted into the YC Bio program get $500K-$1M in funding for 10-20% equity and lab access for 12 months.
YC is also working with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, one of the top aging research institutes in the world, to further support these young companies.
Conclusion
It certainly is a sign of a dramatic shift when mainstream groups like YC announce their support publicly. The idea that aging itself is something that can and should be targeted with therapies to prevent and reverse age-related diseases has really started to gain serious traction in the last year or so. YC joins Longevity Fund, Kizoo Technology Ventures, Methuselah Fund, Apollo Ventures, Juvenescence Limited, and a growing number of others supporting the development of rejuvenation biotechnology to end age-related diseases.
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