LinkGevity, an AI-driven drug discovery company focused on longevity and age-related disease, has been selected to receive a Women TechEU grant. Women TechEU is a project funded through Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research and innovation funding programme.
The award, one of 40 from 1,000 applications from across 38 eligible countries, recognises LinkGevity’s work in tackling complex, age-related diseases through an innovative approach to drug discovery. The company leverages its proprietary Blueprint Theory of Aging, which identifies critical pathological pathways shared across multiple diseases and conditions. This moves beyond traditional single-disease therapies, enabling the development of broad-spectrum therapeutics that target the root causes of multiple age-related conditions simultaneously.
Using this approach, the company has already discovered a promising “anti-necrotic” therapeutic, which targets a key biological pathway linked to six of the top 10 global causes of death. This same pathway has for years been a stumbling block in organ preservation, cryopreservation, and bio-engineering. LinkGevity has recently been recognized by NASA’s Space-H programme for its work, which could help support deep-space missions and protect astronaut health.
“Our AI-driven platform identifies shared molecular pathways across diseases, offering the potential to treat complex multifaceted conditions more effectively,” said Carina Kern, CEO and co-founder of LinkGevity.
“This isn’t just about discovering one drug for one disease – we’re uncovering entire classes of therapeutics with applications across multiple diseases. And because the pathways we uncover are so fundamental in biological collapse, our therapeutics have wider potential, even outside the body, in uses such as organ preservation, bioengineering, and cryopreservation.”
Serena Kern Libera, co-founder and chief operating officer, said: “Age-related diseases are on the rise, but current medical approaches struggle to treat them effectively. My sister and I saw the decline that happened in our dear grandparents. The assumption that a systemic collapse due to aging was inevitable was something we couldn’t accept. We set up LinkGevity in the hope of bringing about a new paradigm in drug discovery. It’s a prestigious honour to be recognised for our deeptech leadership. This grant will enable us to accelerate the development of our technology, empowering us to bring transformative treatments to market and reshape the future of drug discovery.”
Traditional drug discovery approaches, which generally focus on single therapeutics for specific diseases, have struggled with age-related diseases, which are by nature multifactorial. LinkGevity’s technology platform seeks to disrupt this model by developing therapeutics that target key pathways across multiple diseases, offering the potential for a more comprehensive and effective approach to treatment.
The Women TechEU grant, awarded through a rigorous evaluation process, is reserved for Europe’s most promising women-led deeptech startups. Each selected company receives non-dilutive funding, along with a personalised business development package that includes mentoring, coaching, and targeted training. LinkGevity will also benefit from tailored sessions on commercialisation and connections within the EU’s deeptech community, providing support as the company continues to scale. With the support of the Women TechEU program, LinkGevity aims to continue challenging traditional approaches and deliver solutions to some of the most pressing healthcare challenges of our time.
Jim Cornall is editor of Deeptech Digest and publisher at Ayr Coastal Media. He is an award-winning writer, editor, photographer, broadcaster, designer and author. Contact Jim here.
