Good to see the longevity biotech companies promoting their industry segment. A new article in Nature Biotechnology:
Full article here at link below:
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A good explanation of why this organization helps the entire longevity ecosystem, by Reason of FightAging:
Defining the Longevity Industry to Exclude Those Who Circumvent Rigorous Clinical Trials
As the longevity industry grows, the need for investment grows with it. A big leap in funding is needed to move from preclinical to clinical development, and ever more companies are arriving at the point of making that transition. Raising the few million in seed funding needed for a small lab team to produce proof of principle studies to demonstrate that a novel therapy works in mice is a very different prospect in comparison to raising tens of millions to conduct GMP manufacturing and phase II clinical trials in humans, never mind the even larger sums needed for later phase III trials. The types of investors to participate at early and later stages are very different, with very different ideas of risk. It is typically the case that larger the check, the more institutional and conservative the investor.
Institutional, conservative biotech investors care greatly about the way in which they are perceived, since their ability to raise funds from limited partners is very much affected by that perception. When it comes to investing in the longevity industry, conservative investors are attracted by the potential for profit, but bothered by the long-standing existence of a fraudulent “anti-aging” marketplace, alongside numerous groups claiming membership of the longevity industry while selling supplements or treatments via medical tourism with claims that are in no way backed by rigorous evidence. These investors have carefully cultivated reputations, and fear the loss of reputation that results from investing sizable funding into ventures that fail. And some fraction of ventures always fail. When those ventures were by-the-book, nothing-new-here, conservative endeavors that checked all of the proper boxes, that can be forgiven. But venturing out into the unknown? That is less forgivable.
Thus as the longevity industry matures, elements within it are creating industry associations and paving the way to a perception of the longevity industry as a by-the-book, rigorous, nothing-new-here endeavor, just like the rest of the medical biotechnology space. They draw a circle that excludes everyone who sidesteps the existing regulatory system for drug development: the supplement companies; the cosmetic companies; the companies focusing on medical tourism rather than the FDA; and so forth. Today’s position statement is authored by the founders, investors, and leadership of a number of the longevity industry companies closest to clinical trials. This is a part of the process of laying the groundwork to make it easier to find the much greater funding needed for the phase II and phase III trials that lie ahead.