GlycanAge: Pioneering Preventative Healthcare Through Glycobiology

In today's rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, the gap between lifespan and healthspan has never been more apparent. While medical advances have extended our lives significantly, many of us still spend nearly half our lives in poor health. At the intersection of this challenge stands GlycanAge, a pioneering biotech company transforming how we understand and manage chronic inflammation-the silent driver behind most age-related diseases.

The Growing Crisis of Chronic Inflammation

We're living longer than ever before, yet the quality of those extended years hasn't kept pace. Despite gaining nearly two decades of life expectancy since 1960, we still spend about 50% of our lives in declining health. This paradox stems largely from chronic inflammation, which contributes to 3 out of 5 deaths worldwide through conditions like cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, and metabolic diseases.

As our global population ages-with 2.1 billion people expected to be over 60 by 2050-the economic burden of managing these chronic conditions is becoming unsustainable. Healthcare costs associated with chronic diseases have already increased 4.3x over the past two decades and are projected to reach a staggering 12.6% of global GDP by 2050.

The traditional reactive approach to healthcare, where we wait for symptoms to appear before intervening, is clearly failing us. What we need is a paradigm shift toward prevention and early detection.

GlycanAge: The Science of Prediction

This is where GlycanAge's revolutionary technology comes into play. Founded by father-daughter duo Dr. Gordan Lauc and Nikolina Lauc, GlycanAge has developed a groundbreaking test that analyzes glycans-complex sugar molecules that surround proteins in our blood-to predict disease risk up to 10 years before symptoms appear.

"We are not all the same, we are all different, but the majority of medical knowledge is based on assumption that there is a standard human. If you talk about longevity, we know it's a balance of healthy sleep, healthy diet, moderate physical activity, and stress which make us healthier and live longer. But on an individual level, for a given patient, it could be mainly dietary problem, or a sleep problem, or a stress problem, because we are not all the same."

explains Dr. Gordan Lauc, one of the world's leading glycobiologists with over 300 research papers and 16,500 citations to his name.

What makes glycans particularly valuable is their responsiveness to lifestyle changes. Unlike genetic tests that reveal fixed risks, glycan analysis shows how your body is responding to your current lifestyle and environment. This creates an actionable feedback loop where individuals can see how dietary changes, exercise, stress management, and other interventions directly impact their biological age and disease risk.

From Longevity Tool to Diagnostic Revolution

While GlycanAge began in the longevity space, the company is now executing a strategic pivot toward companion diagnostics-a move that positions them to address much larger markets and make a more significant impact on global health.

Their research has already validated glycans as predictive biomarkers for numerous conditions:

• Hypertension (with prediction accuracy of AUC 0.98, 6.3 years in advance)

• Menopause (AUC 0.85)

• Type 2 diabetes (AUC 0.9, 6.5 years in advance)

• Autoimmune conditions like Crohn's disease (AUC 0.77, 6 years in advance)

• Rheumatoid arthritis (AUC 0.928, nearly 10 years before diagnosis)

This science isn't theoretical - it's based on research performed on over 200,000 people and validated through collaborations with prestigious institutions like Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale.

Impressive Traction and Growth

The market has already begun to recognize the value of GlycanAge's approach. The company has delivered over 20,000 tests in more than 60 countries, partnering with over 1,500 clinics globally1. Their business metrics are equally impressive:

• $6.2 million in next twelve months (NTM) revenue

• 62% gross margin

• 45% repeat purchase rate

• 2.8x year-over-year customer growth

Our Investment Journey with GlycanAge

I am particularly excited about our recent investment in GlycanAge. Through third fund we committed $550k as part of a larger $5 million funding round that will support the company's strategic transition from longevity focus to companion diagnostics.

What drew our team to GlycanAge wasn't just their impressive technology or traction, but the stellar team and their potential to fundamentally transform healthcare. In a world where we spend trillions treating diseases that could have been prevented, GlycanAge offers something rare: the ability to see inflammation years before it manifests as disease, creating a window for intervention when it's most effective and least costly.

The Future of Preventative Healthcare

Looking ahead, GlycanAge is well-positioned to become a standard tool in preventative healthcare. Their pipeline includes over 70 biomarkers for advanced disease detection, with patent families already established for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and menopause applications.

As chronic diseases continue to burden healthcare systems worldwide, the value of early detection and prevention will only grow. GlycanAge stands at the forefront of this movement, offering a scientifically validated approach to identifying risk years before traditional diagnostics.