SPACs for Longevity Companies: Helpful or Not?

The present popularity of SPACs, special purpose acquisition companies, might be cynically thought of as being a sign that quantitative easing is catching up with us - there is too much money sloshing around in the system, all of it chasing too few opportunities for significant returns. A SPAC is a publicly traded shell company that accepts investment prior to any specific idea as to what exactly the funds will be used for, sets a few famous people as figureheads to drum up interest, and then buys established companies or sizable stakes in established companies. It is something of the reverse of the more traditional route to taking companies public. There will be SPACs for the longevity industry, because the longevity industry is a hot topic right now. Will this help, in the sense of will it accelerate the path to widely available therapies that can meaningfully impact the course of aging? The argument for: there is still a dearth of funding for later stage longevity-focused companies, and it is harder than it should be to obtain the funds needed to make the transition from preclinical to clinical development in this space. The argument against: the clinical development funding gap isn't the real problem, which is instead that the right programs (i.e. an implementation of all of the component parts of the SENS agenda for human rejuvenation) are still not being funded at the research and seed stage in large enough numbers. Those programs will, on balance, achieve sizabl...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs