Introducing Ark Research
The species opportunity
Cheerleaders for progress like to point out that our expected lifetime has almost doubled since the Industrial Revolution. Although this is true, our maximum lifespan hasn’t changed at all. Very few people live past 90, with a hard limit around 120.
Looking around the animal and plant kingdom, we can find many species that live much longer - or don’t age at all! This is significant because every living thing shares some distant common ancestor and we are all multicellular organisms. Thus, so far it looks like there is no biological reason we have to age (you can find introductions to the science of aging elsewhere, here I am just framing the problem).
In fact a variety of molecular mechanisms in mice and other animals have been shown to extend their lifespan dramatically - and this science is in its infancy.
Very probably, then, sometime in the next century, we will become the first known species to change our evolved lifespan. (Don’t worry, this can only be accomplished by increasing our healthspan, so we are not talking about living a hundred years aged 80!)
This change will present our societies with many grave challenges, but overall it will be a wonderful development. I know people who were raised in a cult and lost decades of their lives, and are now trying to make up for lost time. And I know scientists and artists who could profitably use another century to master their crafts. We each have our individual story to live out, and the brutal loss of youth followed by death at the age of “three-score and ten” does not match the irreducible complexity of humanity.
It’s no use blasting off to space (for example) if you can’t even keep yourself from falling to pieces. I can’t think of a better mission than helping to give ourselves (or our grandkids) the choice of living as long as they feel called to live.
That is where we are going, but we’re not getting there fast enough.
The civilizational challenge
From a very high level, our progress as a species depends on energy, information, and organization.
To a first approximation, individual wealth and technological progress can be measured by how much energy is available to use. We got a big boost in energy when (for example) we domesticated horses, and then a lot more with the Industrial Revolution. Of course, we still haven’t figured out how to produce all the energy we need sustainably!
And we continue to discover crucial new information through scientific research, although we’re still barely scratching the surface and need to speed up.
However, how we organize ourselves is just as important. Although the United States used to build vast projects quickly, today bringing a drug to market can take a dozen years and over a billion dollars. This is far too slow and much too expensive. Our methods of organization are limiting our discovery of new scientific knowledge.
To speed up scientific progress toward increasing human longevity, our mission is to shorten the cycle from discovery to market. We’ll accomplish this by building a different sort of contract research organization: Ark Research.
As a CRO, our goal is to provide longevity researchers the most affordable and fastest method of reaching crucial milestones for their ideas. In the long run, we’ll cut the time and cost by half, reversing the “reverse Moore’s law” trend in biotech.
A longevity-focused CRO brings great value to the anti-aging research community. We will offer every procedure and assay a longevity researcher could require, aggregating multidisciplinary expertise under one roof, and we will pioneer higher-throughput methods for each of them.
The market opportunity
There is a great need to accelerate progress from basic research to translation, and a CRO is an effective way to contribute. Let’s look at how to fund this approach.
Investment is pouring into longbio, with Altos Labs backed by $6 billion, and other $20 billion outfits rumored. More will follow.
Indeed, there is a strong possibility that the first anti-aging drug will be approved in the next decade (or less), which will open the floodgates to unprecedented levels. Because aging increases all-cause mortality, an anti-aging drug is really a “general health and wellness” drug which will improve the life of anyone middle-aged or older. Once such a drug is offered, thereby validating the need for more and better anti-aging drugs, public demand will make $20 billion look like a drop in the bucket.
Big pharma and biotech startups alike outsource the majority of their research to CROs, a trend that is likely to increase as biotech startups adopt a “virtual biotech” model. As a result, the increasing rates of investment in longbio directly translate into increased spend on CRO services.
However, no longevity-focused CRO currently exists. Ark Research will occupy this key niche, aggregating expertise at the intersection of research and translation in longevity science.
(To be clear, our clients will include many teams who are not working on longevity. We’re a longevity-focused CRO in the sense that we focus on services which are useful to longevity research.)
The Business Model
We’re building a longevity-focused CRO with a dual business model: services and IP. This is a somewhat unusual, but not unknown, approach for a CRO. A CRO is ideally positioned to contribute and to capture value. Scientists approach a CRO to conduct discovery and validation (de-risking). The CRO can then choose particularly promising targets to forge partnerships and build IP.
First and foremost, a CRO is a services organization. CROs conduct the majority of research for big pharma and for biotech startups. Our team will provide scientific expertise and advice, project management, and operational advice to our clients. The main product, of course, is conducting basic research on behalf of the clients and providing them with the results so they can progress to the next stage of the clinical pipeline. Because no longevity-focused CRO exists, we have a window of opportunity to establish ourselves as a market leader in longevity expertise.
A CRO is also ideally placed to serve as an honest broker between startup biotechs on the one hand, and big pharma and investors on the other. As a result, some CROs build a rich network to assist clients, and we will do the same.
Price discovery is very difficult with CROs. They do not advertise the prices for their services openly. In general, though, their margins are beautiful, and as Bezos put it, “Your margin is my opportunity.” We will use our profits to expand our services offered, to innovate in automation and increased throughput, and (as covered below) to build our own IP.
While Ark Research will be built on services, we will also build our own intellectual property. Because we will conduct early-stage experiments and trials on behalf of a number of scientific teams, our team will be able to identify unusually sound scientific prospects. When we do, we can either license the IP outright, or partner with the team and share equity. Of course, in the long run we’ll also be able to simply subsidize promising teams in longevity.
With this dual business model, we’ll have the best of both worlds. By providing services, we build deep expertise, finance our own continued growth, and build robustness and flexibility as we pursue our own research. By partnering with the ideas we love most, we directly work toward the world we want to see, and build the most valuable assets possible in the biotech space.
Further Business Model Considerations
Biotech is “going virtual,” leaving actual scientific capabilities in the hands of CROs. Ark Research is a bet in the opposite direction. By actually owning our own labs, we build the capacity to make our own bets on promising lines of research. And the more expertise we build in-house, across multiple longevity-related disciplines, the more positive spillover we create for the science of aging.
Let’s also consider the possibility that an anti-aging drug doesn’t get approved in the next decade. That could lead to the longbio equivalent of the infamous “AI winter,” in which investors, burned by over-promising and under-delivering, declined to invest any more. In that case, Ark Research will continue to deliver services in the biotech space. Since we’re supported by service delivery, we’ll also be positioned to continue to sponsor longbio research. We’ll be an ark to keep the dream alive for future generations of researchers.
We’ll also building a CRO consulting and project management business. Many thousands of CROs exist, with widely varying expertise, customer service and project management skills, and prices. Navigating this landscape is an art unto itself. This business will greatly ease this burden for nascent biotech startups.
The consulting business will also provide crucial business intelligence and contacts to Ark Research. As noted above, price and service discovery in the CRO world is extraordinarily difficult, as the culture is opaque and lacks transparency. Ark Research will benefit hugely by learning what services are offered and on what terms. Market research of this sort is simply unavailable currently.
Further, by providing its services at a reduced price to Ark Research clients, the consulting and project management business can also function as a loss leader for Ark. Alternatively, the consulting services could be given free to any Ark Research client so long as Ark can perform a sensible percentage of the overall project. For example, if Ark can perform 25% of the services requested, and manage the rest on behalf of the client, we can take on contracts that otherwise we could not.
Scientific Opportunities
Ark Research offers many advantages to our scientists.
First, as we establish ourselves and then expand, we’ll be able to support more labs. We can give talented scientists their own labs earlier in their careers. Because we’re a service organization, our scientists will work closely with our clients to design the most scientifically valid and cost-effective experimental approach possible. While it’s true these are someone else’s lines of research, the dream is to allow our scientists to pursue their own research as well.
Second, a CRO allows a scientist to work at the fertile intersection of basic and translational research.
Third, in academia, a senior scientist spends over half their time on grant-writing and administrative tasks. Our scientists are free of the (seemingly!) endless grant-writing and fundraising that characterize academic science. They will focus on what only they can do: research.
Fourth, we’ll build a genuinely exciting and multidisciplinary culture. Just as the Buck and Barshop institutes brings together many disciplines to work on aging, there’s immense scientific value in a CRO working at multiple stages of the discovery and clinical pipeline on aging, and immense value for a scientist in working so closely with many disciplines organized around a central theme.
One crucial aspect is that we’re steering away from commodity services, toward more difficult, higher-end procedures, and we’ll have a lot of freedom to define which services to offer.
Fifth, over time, we’ll find ways to turn bespoke procedures into commodities, via improved procedures and automation. This is an advantage of a commercial environment. Academic procedures tend to be oriented toward novel, one-off procedures, leaving the bulk of the grunt work on graduate and post-graduate researchers. As a CRO, we will have the incentive and the opportunity to automate as much as possible.
Finally, as we’re building, we can define our own culture. It’s incredibly important to us to find people who are truly passionate about building a great institution, which inspires and enables great work. If you were fortunate enough to work with a really top-notch PI, then you’ve experienced what’s possible in a great team environment, but few people have had this experience, and most underestimate how much growth is possible in a really collaborate environment.
Career Opportunities
Currently we’re looking for three kinds of people to join.
First, we’re looking for scientists who are excited to build their own lab and a dynamic culture, and to work with multiple disciplines pushing the edge of possibility in longevity. Our scientists will help decide which services and assays we’ll offer as a company, and partner with our clients to improve and execute their experiments. Because our goal is also to halve the time and cost for these procedures, we’re also looking for people with an interest in engineering and automating processes. Our scientists will co-publish with our clients, and be ready to advocate for partnerships with research they find particularly exciting. This will remain a science-driven company.
Second, we’re looking for an experienced CSM, who can help us navigate partnerships with biotech startups and big pharma companies. The complexity and scale of this space are vast, and there is no substitute for experience.
Third, we’re looking for operators and project managers. As we add more labs and increase our automation efforts, we’ll need to coordinate multiple complex projects. And as a small CRO, we’ll compete in large part by providing a superior project management experience. We’ll take inspiration from our “divinely discontented” clients to provide a better experience than they thought possible.
Every member of our team will play a crucial role in our mission to close the “valley of death” for biotech startups, to fight our civilization-scale entropy which slows scientific progress, and to contribute significantly to giving all humans the choice of living as long as makes sense for their life narrative.