NEW YORK – Human longevity startup Clock.bio said Wednesday that it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding.
The round was led by LocalGlobe with participation from BlueYard Capital, Onsight Ventures, and Jonathan Milner, the founder of biotech company Abcam.
Cambridge, UK-based Clock.bio said the seed funding has enabled the company to generate its so-called Atlas of Rejuvenation Factors database, which contains more than 100 genes implicated in developmental biology that the firm identified through its genome-wide CRISPR screening and single-cell RNA-sequencing experiments in human induced pluripotent stem cells.
In addition, Clock.bio said the money raised will enable the company to further validate the targets in somatic cells, analyze the pathways at work, and map them to specific disease indications. The company also plans to identify partners to initiate clinical trials.
"Our approach decodes an existing part of human biology, which makes us confident the findings will be translatable," Clock.bio CEO Markus Gstöttner said in a statement. "Running CRISPR screens across the full human genome constitutes an unbiased, comprehensive methodology, which now gives us more than one shot on target."