New platform lets nutraceutical firms analyze how healthy-aging ingredients and formulas might extend lifespan, healthspan

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InVivo Biosystems (Eugene, OR), a specialist in genetic small-animal model creation and in vivo testing, has launched a new platform to analyze how compounds such as nutrients can affect lifespan and healthspan. The platform’s in vivo modeling data can be correlated to humans. Its purpose is to help healthy-aging companies research and develop ingredients and products faster and to substantiate claims and IP patents with scientific evidence.

The new InVivo Longevity Platform uses a non-vertebrate model that provides lifespan and healthspan measurements by monitoring survival, morphology, and movement in simple animal models. The platform can also help identify pathways that contribute to any observed extension of lifespan or healthspan using whole transcriptome sequencing.

The firm says it can often be difficult to gather data on life-extending compounds that can be directly correlated to human data. “This new platform gives InVivo Biosystems’ customers access to actual lifespan impacts and correlates that with deep molecular information in known aging pathways,” the company explains. The system can provide information on how a compound affected mitochondrial and oxidative stress or transcriptional changes related to aging. “The new InVivo Longevity Platform informs product development teams on the impact of the compound formulation on lifespan, the activity level and muscle use throughout senescence, and the underlying mechanism of action (MoA),” the company further explained in a press release.

This data will be key for companies looking to develop IP and file patents based on substantiated claims, and gives companies an advantage in the increasingly competitive longevity market.

“Health-conscious consumers are looking for products that deliver the advertised benefits of what they say they can do,” the press release states. “Using the proprietary InVivo Longevity Platform helps firm assess product performance by generating concrete efficacy data. The platform ensures accuracy, reproducibility, and robust conclusions by combining continuous automated data collection of lifespan metrics and genetic analysis.”

The platform also helps companies develop products more quickly using the data provided. “The new platform helps companies prioritize development pipelines by giving them actionable, quantitative information about how candidate formulations combat aging and age-related conditions,” said Matt Beaudet, CEO, InVivo Biosystems, in the press release. “Using the best non-vertebrate model for longevity and healthspan studies, InVivo Longevity Platform specializes in giving clients a full picture of how each compound or test article impacts several key pieces of the aging puzzle.” The company says that, on average, work on an InVivo Longevity Platform project can be completed in less than five months, from ideation to final report.

InVivo says these types of testing capabilities have traditionally been available mostly to university laboratories, and that the InVivo Longevity Platform now makes those tools accessible to industries. Of note, the company says it can also assist clients with preparing and filing patent applications. It says it’s already worked with hundreds of clients in recent months to test the new platform.

InVivo says that the age-tech and longevity industry is expected to grow three-fold by 2050.