Deep Knowledge Life Sciences and BioViva announce partnership

Seattle-based biotech startup BioViva USA Inc. and London-based biotech investment fund Deep Knowledge Life Sciences (DKLS) are announcing a partnership with the aim of bringing about affordable gene therapies.

"BioViva aims to make gene therapy affordable to everyone. Dmitry Kaminskiy, the founding partner of Deep Knowledge Life Sciences, is enthusiastically funding gene therapy, and is himself an early adopter", said BioViva CEO Elizabeth Parrish, adding "We both want to see a world where investors actually live their legacy instead of just leaving it", alluding to a possible future trend.

Parrish made headlines in 2015 when she travelled to an undisclosed location outside the US and personally underwent two of her own company's experimental gene therapies: one to protect against loss of muscle mass with age, another to battle stem cell depletion. It was a gesture intended to prove the safety of the therapies and clear the road ahead for human trials in the US. Months later, BioViva are tracking her results and she has reported no negative side-effects.

"I believed the biotech industry had become over-regulated and that the prevailing model was unlikely to bring new therapies to market in our lifetime. What we needed was a company that would treat diseased patients with no other options and then develop these treatments into preventative medicines. BioViva has accomplished so much with so little. Now, with DKLS behind, so much more is possible. The sky's the limit for Bioviva", said Parrish.

"BioViva's game-changing approach makes it an ideal fit for the DKLS portfolio with its exclusive focus on disruptive biotechnologies aimed at tackling biomedicine's greatest challenges. The sooner we can bring affordable gene therapies and other cell therapies to market, the more needless deaths can be avoided", said the fund's founding partner Dmitry Kaminskiy, adding "Liz Parrish is a model leader of company, and we could like to see more founders in our portfolio with skin-in-the-game."
For Kaminskiy, it's not all about profits. He wants to shift the entire industry up a gear, and put an end to the lack of vision he believes has mired biotechnology for decades. Smarter funding for translational biomedical science would raise human life expectancy to 120 and beyond.

"Many innovative companies have come to us looking for funding and support. BioViva is one among several other breakthrough companies that are going to leapfrog the current generation of biotech and will be included in our portfolio. This is the start of a big trend, and it ought to give investors food for thought. 2017 will be year in which we will see an investment boom in the longevity industry", said Kaminskiy.

About BioViva: BioViva USA, Inc. is a to-clinic gene therapeutics company incorporated in Delaware. BioViva utilizes intramural and extramural peer-reviewed research in order to create marketable therapies for treating age-related diseases and infirmities -- including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, heart-disease, cancer, sarcopenia and kidney failure -- at the level of the genome. For more information visit: http://bioviva-science.com

About Deep Knowledge Life Sciences (DKLS): An innovative investment fund which aims to accelerate the development of biotechnologies for healthy longevity. It is London-based subsidiary of Deep Knowledge Ventures. DKLS has gathered eight life science portfolio companies of Deep Knowledge Ventures (DKV), including Insilico Medicine and Pathway Pharmaceutical. For more information visit: http://deepknowledge.life

IVAO to announce plans to invest over $1 billion in aging and longevity projects at a conference in St Petersburg

IVAO, an international organization with offices in San Francisco, California, is organizing an international conference titled “Biomedical Innovations for Healthy Longevity” aging and longevity research, where top thought academic thought leaders and industry executives from all over the world will convene for three days to present latest research results, discuss translational and commercialization opportunities, establish valuable collaborations, network and partner.

The event features a business forum with one day dedicated to round table discussions on presenting favorably presenting aging research in the press, novel ways to attract funding and classifying aging and many age-associated conditions in international disease classification registries including the WHO’s ICD-11. 

At the conference IVAO plans to announce a roadmap for investing over $1 billion into a broad range of projects, companies and financial instruments linked to longevity research. 

“After millennia of failed promises, we are finally reaching the point in human evolution, where major breakthroughs contributing to the body of knowledge in aging are happening almost every month in laboratories all over the world. We decided to combine the best features of mutual funds, venture capital firms and analytical companies in one place to build a reasonably conservative investment vehicle to take part in the coming longevity boom,” said Andrey Fomenko, founder of IVAO. 

The conference will transpire from the 25th to 28th of April at Grand Europa Hotel in St. Petersburg with some of the most promising and innovative scientists and companies co-organizing the event. Event registration website is http://www.ivaoconf.org and a brief video was made to present the forum: https://youtu.be/dmcZznSmNng. 

“Since 1995 Andrey Fomenko and I are monitoring research activities in aging and longevity. When in 1996 we established our non-profit “Eternal Youth Foundation”, most people did not understand. But today these technologies are becoming mainstream and time horizons for many technologies are shrinking,” said Lada Fomenko, the head of Eternal Youth Foundation and Director of IVAO.

Scientists, industry executive, investors and students are invited to attend the conference and network with the most advanced professionals in aging and longevity to help advance the entire field.

About IVAO

IVAO provides a platform to link scientists, business people, funding bodies and general public to advance aging research with a conservative business model and investments that yield attractive returns while minimizing risk through careful screening and hedging strategies. This portal will integrate years of careful research and analysis with a social network, investment vehicle and even a range of life extension strategies. IVAO will be gradually evolving the system to make it into a tool of choice for venture capitalists, hedge funds as well as companies, laboratories and even individual scientists. For more information, please visit: http://www.ivao.com