One of them is trying to help people live longer. The other, their dogs.
James Peyer, the CEO of Cambrian, is buying up majority stakes in drugs that could combat a particular illness while showing promise for broader use among healthy humans. Meanwhile, Celine Halioua, the CEO of Loyal, is developing drugs to make dogs live longer.
Fundamentally life extension, or longevity, is about finding drugs and treatments that can be given to healthy humans to help them live longer, healthier lives. Instead of just treating illnesses, entrepreneurs in the space want to find ways to stave off aging in already healthy people.
The space has long been a fascination of mine. In February 2022, I profiled Elad Gil’s investments in an array of companies looking to make healthy humans live longer, healthier lives.
The HBO show Silicon Valley helped popularize the idea that Silicon Valley elites were pumping their veins with younger people’s blood. (I’ve yet to get anyone to confess to me that they’re buying plasma.)
To the chagrin of this week’s guests, one tech mogul desperate to avoid death has received a lot of the attention recently. That’s Braintree founder Bryan Johnson.
Time magazine just profiled Johnson under the headline “The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever.”
Even as Johnson is getting a lot of attention for his self-experimentation, there’s a growing view that there could be something credible behind Silicon Valley’s interest in life extension. The Economist just wrote that “slowing human ageing is now the subject of serious research.”
I dug in with Halioua and Peyer about where they saw the most opportunities, how their own companies were progressing, and why they thought Johnson’s publicity campaign was doing a disservice to companies working on longevity.
The duo helped break down the space, discussing which types of companies they think are innovators, which efforts are more speculative moonshots, and which ones are simply snake oil.