UK longevity startup GlycanAge raises €7.4 million to bring glycan-based ageing diagnostics into mainstream healthcare

UK-based longevity startup GlycanAge has raised €7.4 million ($8.7 million) in fresh funding to accelerate the clinical development of its technology and expand access to glycan testing for clinicians worldwide.

The round was led by Fifth Quarter Ventures, with participation from Guinness Ventures, BrightCap Ventures, South Central Ventures, Impetus Capital, Vesna Deep Tech VC, and Lightfield Equity. The round was also joined on a pro rata basis by existing backers, including LaunchHub Ventures and Kadmos Capital, among others.

“Our goal is to make glycan testing part of standard preventive diagnostics, where everyone over the age of 30 can access it through their healthcare provider,” said Prof Gordan Lauc, co-founder and chief scientific officer of GlycanAge. 

In 2024, the company raised €3.9 million seed funding round, led by LAUNCHub Ventures and UK-based deep-tech fund Kadmos Capital.

England-based GlycanAge was co-founded in 2020 by father-and-daughter duo Prof Lauc and Nikolina Lauc with a mission to make personalised, preventative healthcare a reality. Its work is centred around glycans, which are complex sugars and are one of life’s four crucial building blocks, alongside proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. They coat every cell surface and are attached to over half of all human proteins, regulating immunity, cell signalling, and development.

The company specialises in interpreting these glycan signals, particularly those linked to chronic inflammation, a fundamental driver of the ageing process. Its analysis claims to provide a detailed assessment of an individual’s biological age, offering insights into how lifestyle choices, inflammation, and environmental factors influence ageing over time. Its flagship biomarker is an “inflammaging” clock based on IgG glycosylation. 

With this new capital, GlycanAge plans to advance the development of its key clinical applications, including tools focused on stress and resilience, cardiometabolic health, weight management and hormones. It aims to package them into indication-specific products for practitioners.

“In parallel, the company plans to validate selected diagnostic indications and develop its first lab-developed tests (LDTs) for use in hospital and reference laboratory settings. This roadmap is underpinned by research collaborations with leading institutes worldwide, among which Northwestern University Hospital and Mayo Clinic,” the company mentioned in the press release. 

St Catherine Specialty Hospital in Zagreb has become the company’s first pilot partner, as it advances the adoption of glycan testing within hospital settings. GlycanAge plans to deploy its technology into more than 10 hospitals across Europe and the Middle East in the next year.

The company has also partnered with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST),  which will host GlycanAge’s first laboratory in Saudi Arabia. The facility is set to serve as a central hub for glycan testing and method transfer across hospital and laboratory networks in the Kingdom.

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