Genflow Biosciences PLC will become the first longevity-focused biotech ever to float in Europe when joins the London Stock Exchange’s standard list.
An oversubscribed placing of shares has raised £3.7mln and ascribed an initial valuation of £23.4mln to the fledgling business.
In the US a new industry is growing up around companies developing treatments designed to allow people to enjoy a healthy old age.
Billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have invested heavily, while the race to find life-enhancing treatments has spawned such R&D-based companies such as Unity Biotechnology, Samumed, Bioage and Frequency Therapeutics.
Genflow’s plan to list on the London Stock Exchange, rather than taking the show to the Nasdaq exchange that has bred the generations of big biotechs, is a deliberate move.
Chief executive Eric Leire: “It was very important to me to capture the open field in Europe.”
“London’s history of investment in biotech is not matched by Euronext [the rival mainland Europe exchange]; neither is there the same [investor] expertise,” he added in an interview with Proactive.
Genflow’s focus is on the Sirtuin 6 gene, or SIRT6 for short, which is seen as ‘master regulator of healthy ageing’.
It targets four of the nine ‘hallmarks of ageing’ rather than single facets that are the preserve of other drug candidates.
The company’s R&D effort leans very heavily into the research carried out by Dr Vera Gorbunova at the University of Rochester in the US, who is also on the company’s scientific advisory board.