Biopharma ignores enormous markets because of VC incentive structures, regulatory friction, and status hierarchies among researchers. The result: fertility biology and longevity remain nearly vacant despite clear scientific foundations. This piece by investor Elad Gil names the specific gaps and the specific papers proving they are solvable.
On fertility, Hayashi's group in Japan has already produced mouse offspring from two fathers by converting somatic cells into sperm and egg via induced pluripotency. The human analog would let any two adults reproduce together and let women conceive at any age. Separately, girls are born with 1 to 2 million oocytes but arrive at puberty with roughly 300,000, and only a fraction of those ever mature into viable eggs. No serious startup cohort is attacking either problem. On longevity, aging is a genetically druggable phenotype with published data behind it, yet Gil counts fewer than a half-dozen legitimate companies in the space globally, including BioAge and NewLimit, both of which he has funded.
The original article goes further into neurosensory aging, vision loss, hearing decline, and additional indication-level gaps with supporting citations for each. The argument throughout is not that the science is missing but that the incentive layer filtering which science becomes a company is broken. Read it for the full bibliography and to understand which specific biological mechanisms Gil thinks are closest to translation.
[READ ORIGINAL →]