Second Century Foundation takes on aging research it says receives no funding from either the US National Institutes of Health or venture capital investors

Second Century Foundation takes on aging research it says receives no funding from either the US National Institutes of Health or venture capital investors

Foundation president Michael Reisman, a Centerview Partners banker who advises on biotech company sales, introduced the foundation at the NOVA conference on April 25. By October 13, project descriptions were available on the foundation’s website.

The foundation identifies two funding criteria: the National Institutes of Health will not fund work without a publication, and venture capital investors will not fund work without a return within ten years. Reisman’s slides frame these as two questions: government and nonprofit funders ask, “Can this be published?”, while industry funders ask, “Can we earn more than a fivefold return within ten years?”. Reisman includes student clubs among the activities these criteria leave unfunded: the US has about 4000 universities and fewer than ten active longevity clubs, although starting a club costs less than $10 000.

The foundation’s simulator compares treating a single disease with slowing aging. In the model, the annual risk of death rises exponentially with age. Curing a disease eliminates deaths from that disease alone, while slowing aging is assumed to delay deaths from all causes at once. Half of Americans live to about 82; curing cancer moves that threshold to 85, while slowing aging by 20% from age forty moves it to 90.

Reisman examines the initial public offerings (IPO) of three companies developing drugs for age-related diseases. Sirtris, whose co-founders included aging researcher David Sinclair, went public in 2007 at $10 per share. In 2008, pharmaceutical company GSK bought it for $22,50 per share. According to the slides, the drug did not work, but IPO investors more than doubled their money. Scientist Matt Kaeberlein argues that pharmaceutical companies were burned by the hype around Sirtris and are only now returning to aging research. In 2018, Morgan Stanley wrote of Unity Biotechnology: “Removing cells that accumulate with aging offers a unique approach to tackling chronic diseases”; in 2025, Unity was dissolved after unsuccessful trials. In December 2024, BioAge halted a drug trial because some participants had elevated liver enzymes.

In Reisman’s analysis, all three companies’ investor materials follow the same structure: they begin with age-related diseases, then introduce a shared target and an initial disease indication (mimicking calorie restriction to treat type two diabetes at Sirtris, and mimicking exercise to treat obesity at BioAge), followed by expansion into other diseases. He uses a thought experiment to explain why a company cannot target aging directly from the outset: Sinclair asks the FDA for permission to demonstrate that a drug extends life and is told he would need a twenty-year placebo-controlled trial involving 10 000 patients. His investors then tell him, “You’re fired.” Reisman’s conclusion is: “Wall Street will understand the enormous market opportunity, and if your drug looks promising, the labels ‘longevity’ and ‘aging’ will not hold you back.”

The investor memorandum the foundation is writing with Norn Group, which awards grants for longevity research, also describes the path to a company sale or IPO. It includes a calculation of the present value of a drug’s future revenues after costs. A funding flow map will show longevity spending by universities, companies and government, along with areas the foundation considers underfunded.

The foundation awards fellowships to researchers whose work would otherwise not take place. Its first fellow, a Columbia University doctoral student, is developing nonviral delivery methods for gene and cell therapies. According to the foundation’s description, these therapies reach only 10% of tissues, and viral vectors can cause inflammation.