Do long-lived flies hold the key to extending human longevity?

Rejuve Biotech is combining advanced AI with data from Methuselah flies to develop therapeutics that target aging and age-related disease.
Longevity focused biotechnology startup Rejuve Biotech is using AI and data from long-lived animal models to develop novel therapeutics designed to help people live longer and healthier. The company holds exclusive rights to the data from so-called Methuselah flies – long-lived fruit flies that have been specifically bred for remarkable longevity.

Rejuve.Bio believes that combining this data with crowdsourced human data sets and “neural-symbolic” AI will enable it to quickly develop “effective healthspan-enhancing and aging-related disease mitigating products.”

Longevity.Technology: Rejuve.Bio operates within the SingularityNET ecosystem, an organization on a mission to create an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that is “decentralized, democratic, inclusive, and beneficial.” Founded by Dr Ben Goertzel, SingularityNET acts like an incubator to companies like Rejuve.Bio, providing guidance, funding and expertise. To learn more about how Rejuve.Bio aims to crack the longevity code, we spoke to the company’s CEO, Kennedy Schaal.

The Methuselah fly data on which Rejuve.Bio is founded is the culmination of a fascinating project, started more than 40 years ago by UC Irvine professor Michael Rose.

“Normal lifespan for a fruit fly is about five to six weeks,” says Schaal. “By selectively breeding the flies for increased longevity – taking the eggs of the longest-lived flies for the next generation, over thousands of generations – they got the flies up to about a 12-week lifespan.”

‘No limit’ to fly lifespan
In 2008, while she was working for longevity genomics company Genescient, Schaal took ownership of the Methuselah flies and has continued to selectively breed them.

Do long-lived flies hold the key to extending human longevity?