Sebastian A. Brunemeier, MSc

Sebastian A. Brunemeier, MSc is Cofounder and CEO at ImmuneAGE Pharma, a biotech company focusing on immunosenescence. The company plans to develop small molecules for immune rejuvenation.

He is Cofounder and Advisor at Healthspan Capital, a venture fund focused on longevity biotech and geroscience since 2021. He is also a Board Member at Revivo Therapeutics and Equator Therapeutics.

Since December 2021, Sebastian has been Venture Scout for Picus Capital, where they are investing in biotech and health tech. He is also advising VitaDAO, Molecule GmbH, and until recently Mckinsey & Company.

Sebastian was Cofounder and COO at Samsara Therapeutic, where he has been an advisor since 2020. Samsara Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical platform company aiming to discover therapeutics that extend healthy lifespan. They are the largest pipeline for the identification, chemical optimization, and in vivo validation of compounds that extend healthy lifespan and enhance autophagy. With operations in Oxford, Paris, and Graz, Austria, they were voted the #1 biotech startup at the FT Global Pharmaceuticals and Biotech conference 2019 in London. They received $3.2 million seed financing led by Apollo Ventures with participation by Cambrian Biopharma, Qatalyst Partners, and Kite Ventures. Read Autophagy, healthspan and lifespan.

Previously, between 2019 and 2020, Sebastian was Cofounder and Chief Investment Officer at Cambrian Biopharma and Cofounder and CEO at Cyclone Therapeutics, a spinout of The Scripps Research Institute, a portfolio company of Cambrian Biopharma focused on natural products targeting the biology of aging and proteostasis.

Cambrian Biopharma is a biotech venture capital holding company that helps scientists transmit their discoveries from the lab into the clinic. They are focused on a specific field of biomedical research, the biology of aging and partner with academic geroscientists to build companies, manage preclinical drug discovery, and finance clinical trials. They have launched 10 companies with leading geroscientists globally.

For two years, from 2018, Sebastian was the Principal at Apollo Health Ventures, the first and largest aging-focused venture capital fund in the world.

In 2014 he won a Fulbright Research Fellowship to conduct research on the genetics of aging, cellular senescence, telomere dynamics, and genomic instability at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC) in the laboratory of Dr. Miguel Godinho Ferreira.

In 2013, Sebastian was Research Assistant at Caltech on Biotechnology venture capital economics research, including research on the dynamics of venture-backed IPOs. He left in 2014 to help launch Pascal Chemistry, a chemical engineering company where he was the Lab Manager and left it when he won the Fulbright Research Fellowship.

Sebastian was Skaggs-Oxford Scholar at the Scripps Research Institute joint PhD program in the Department of Molecular Medicine, and a SENS Foundation Scholar at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in 2012.

He earned his Masters Degree of Science in Biomedical Science and Molecular Neuroscience from the University of Amsterdam. He earned his Masters of Business Management in Life Science Business Management from Vrije University Amsterdam with his thesis Evaluating Preclinical Drug Discovery Programs for Venture Capital: A Semi-Quantitative Model. At Pitzer College, Sebastian earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Science in Human Biology and focused on neuroscience and molecular biology.

In 2011, he did his Thesis Research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City in the lab of Dr. John H. Morrison, Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Professor of Neuroscience. His thesis sought to visualize a novel monoclonal GluA1/2/3 antibody with functional avidity for three of four receptor subunits and to characterize its localization using confocal and electron microscopy.

He did his partial DPhil (PhD) with his doctoral thesis research on the biochemistry of aging at the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar. He focused on drug discovery at the interface of cellular senescence, proteostasis, and autophagy before he paused to help launch a biotech startup.

Sebastian is one of the Founding Fellows of OnDeck Longevity Biotech Fellowship. Their mission is to increase the number of people working to build longevity biotechnology companies. Hosted on the established On Deck platform, the Longevity Biotech Fellowship aims to offer talented entrepreneurs, graduate students, and academics guidance in building aging and regenerative medicine biotech startups by embedding them in a community of experts and mentors such as David Sinclair, Laura Deming, Jim Mellon, George Church, and Aubrey de Grey. Read New Longevity Biotech Fellowship launches.

Sebastian is the OnDeck course host on Learn how to build an anti-aging biotech startup in 10 weeks surrounded by an incredible community.

He served as trustee of the British Society for Research on Aging, advisor to McKinsey & Company, and was associate at Deep Knowledge Ventures (now known as Longevity.Capital).

Watch Geroscience: The Biology of Aging @ Oxford, Scientific Diligence for Longevity Biotech,and Brain Ageing Biochemistry & Therapeutics @ Oxford. Watch his contributions on Geroscience at Oxford Ageing Network.

Listen to The Longevity Biotech Show #016: Sebastian Brunemeier.

Visit his LinkedIn profile and Google Scholar profile. Follow him on Facebook, Quora, and Twitter.