Beauty giant Beiersdorf joins investors in longevity focused startup – initial clinical trials expected in kidney transplantation.
Swiss longevity biotech Cellvie has raised $5 million in new funding to advance its mitochondria-based therapeutics. The Zurich based startup, founded in 2018 as a spinout from Harvard Medical School, is developing off-the-shelf mitochondria derived from human cell lines as a treatment for conditions tied to cellular energy failure.
Cellvie’s approach builds on work pioneered at Harvard, including methods for augmenting and replacing damaged mitochondria. The company’s core hypothesis is that therapeutic mitochondria transplantation can restore or enhance cellular energy metabolism, counteracting the mitochondrial dysfunction that contributes to both acute conditions such as ischemia-reperfusion injury as well as chronic age-related decline.
With an initial focus on ischemia-reperfusion injury, Cellvie is preparing its lead program in kidney transplantation for clinical testing, with a significant portion of the proceeds earmarked for transferring its proprietary mitochondria preparation process to a manufacturing partner able to operate under Good Manufacturing Practice standards. This step is a prerequisite for initiating a Phase I/IIa trial, which the company expects to pursue following an additional financing planned later this year.
Ischemia-reperfusion injury arises when blood supply returns to tissue after a period of restriction, triggering a cascade of mitochondrial damage that worsens cell death. The condition is central to complications in heart attacks, stroke, organ transplantation and surgical procedures, collectively affecting more than three million patients annually in the US and Europe. Cellvie’s initial focus is kidney transplantation, where ischemic damage is a key driver of delayed graft function and limits donor organ availability. The company says that success in this setting could open applications in other solid organ transplants and cardiovascular interventions.
Longer-term, Cellvie, which secured $5 million in seed funding back in 2021, aims to establish mitochondria transplantation as a new therapeutic modality across a range of high-burden, age-related diseases. Beyond transplantation, the company is exploring the broader potential of mitochondria as a therapeutic platform, and is developing a mitochondria-enabled gene delivery system designed to exploit the organelle’s natural biodistribution and efficient cellular uptake. The company is also investigating applications in longevity, given mitochondria’s role in regulating energy, intracellular signaling and pathways tied to aging.
“At Cellvie, we are committed to realizing the platform potential of mitochondria,” Cellvie CEO Dr Alexander Schueller told us. “Our initial focus on kidney transplantation is strategic, as it provides a highly efficient path to demonstrating clinical efficacy. Once the therapeutic promise of mitochondria is validated in patients, expanding into major cardiac and aging-related applications will become far more straightforward. With mitochondria having shown the potential to reinvigorate cells’ failing energy metabolism, there is certainly a basis for going after a host of thus far intractable medical conditions.”
The new financing round was led by Taiho Ventures and joined by Kizoo Technology Capital and Beiersdorf Venture Capital.
“The platform-potential of mitochondria has been particularly compelling to us, offering the prospect of treating a wide variety of disease-pathologies beyond transplantation,” said Taiho boss Sakae Asanuma. “This round will allow the company to keep up the pace and shorten the time to the clinic.”
The investment from Beiersdorf will be of particular interest to longevity watchers. With sales of €9.5 billion, the German beauty giant is a leader in skin care products and skin research, encompassing brands including NIVEA, Eucerin and La Prairie. In addition to its latest investment in Cellvie, the German beauty giant has made a slew of strategic longevity plays in recent years, including partnerships with senolytics startup Rubedo Life Sciences and mitophagy-focused biotech Vincere Biosciences, and last month released a new NIVEA product containing an “epigenetic ingredient” claimed to activate skin longevity.
