Moving Faster on Longevity: How Unlimited Bio Is Rethinking Gene Therapy Development
Is it possible to develop and deliver gene therapies for aging faster — without cutting corners, but also without being paralysed by regulation?
At Infinita, we love showcasing the incredible innovators in our ecosystem. Today, we’re excited to share the story of Anna and Ivan, the founders behind Unlimited Bio.
In less than 2 years, they’ve launched a company, treated patients, generated revenue, secured funding from Infinita VC, and begun preparing one of the boldest experiments in longevity science: a combination gene therapy trial in healthy individuals.
Here’s how they did it — and why they believe regulatory innovation may be just as important as scientific innovation.
The Bottleneck No One Talks About
Both Anna and Ivan come from deep biotech backgrounds.
Anna holds a PhD in bioengineering and previously built multiple biotech companies developing vaccines and age-related diseases. Ivan spent years working on rejuvenation technologies that, despite promising science, were still stuck in preclinical stages.
The contrast became impossible to ignore.
“In the traditional system,” Ivan explains, “you can spend years preparing, testing, filing paperwork — and still be far from injecting the first patient.”
Anna had seen the same pattern. One of the biggest structural challenges is that aging itself isn’t recognized as a treatable condition in most regulatory frameworks. Instead, companies must pursue narrow disease indications rather than targeting the biological drivers of aging directly.
Large pharmaceutical companies often avoid this space entirely. As a result, much of the progress in longevity science comes from small biotech startups and academic labs navigating rigid regulatory constraints.
Even when science moves quickly, infrastructure can slow everything down.
Anna experienced this firsthand when her team developed a COVID vaccine and completed Phase II trials within two years — a remarkable pace by biotech standards. But despite strong safety and efficacy data, the program stalled due to manufacturing limitations and licensing requirements.
“Science can move fast,” Anna says. “Infrastructure and regulation often don’t.”
Discovering a Different Model
Their search for alternatives eventually led them to Prospera, where the first hub of Infinita City is based.
Initially, they planned only a short visit during one of the early pop-up city gatherings. What they found surprised them.
“The depth of expertise was incredible,” Ivan recalls. “You could walk up to almost anyone and get serious feedback — investors, operators, scientists.”
Within two weeks, they had connected with advisors, investors, and collaborators. One of the gene therapy patients they met there later became an investor in the company.
When an accelerator program launched in March, they decided to stay longer — and see how fast they could actually build.
The “MVP” Therapy
Their approach was simple but clever: repurpose an existing gene therapy that Anna knew about.
The therapy had already been approved in Russia in 2011 for patients with lower limb ischemia — a condition where poor blood supply threatens tissue death and amputation. The treatment works by stimulating the growth of new capillaries.
Anna saw another possible use.
“As we age, our microvasculature deteriorates,” she explains. “Capillary density declines. Blood flow becomes less efficient. Why wait until someone is in critical condition?”
Their hypothesis: repurpose the therapy for preventive use — improving muscle oxygenation, aerobic capacity, and vascular health in healthy individuals over 50.
It was a calculated move.
The therapy’s safety profile was already well understood. The mechanism of action was clear. And most importantly, it allowed them to test Prospera’s regulatory framework without spending years on early-stage R&D.
“It was our MVP,” Ivan says. “Not just of the therapy — but of the regulatory system itself.”
The results surprised even them.
It took about nine months to treat their first patient.
Less than a year later, they had generated their first revenue.
For founders coming from systems where first-in-human trials can take many years, that timeline felt revolutionary.
Expanding the Pipeline
Once revenue began, the team moved quickly.
They expanded their pipeline and introduced a second, more advanced gene therapy program, building on the infrastructure and experience they had developed.
But experimentation remains core to their philosophy.
Recently, while attending the Infinite Games, Ivan began running a controlled experiment on himself using one of their gene therapies aimed at hair regeneration.
Half of his scalp received the treatment.
The other half received a placebo.
He doesn’t know which side is which.
Hair growth takes time to evaluate — peak results may appear between six and twelve months — but the experiment reflects how the team thinks about science.
“We don’t just want anecdotes,” Ivan explains. “We want data. Even negative results teach us something.”
Failed hypotheses aren’t losses. They’re information. In science, learning what doesn’t work is just as important as discovering what does.
The Next Big Experiment
Now, the team is preparing something even more ambitious:
A clinical trial combining two gene therapies in healthy individuals.
If successful, it could open the door to multi-gene combination therapies targeting aging more holistically — potentially dozens of genetic interventions working together to address multiple aging pathways at once.
The pieces are already coming together.
Manufacturing is complete. Permissions are in place. The infrastructure is ready.
“We’re almost there,” Ivan says. “Now we’re testing whether we can smoothly run a combo gene therapy trial.”
If it works, it won’t just be a milestone for UnlimitedBio.
It could become a proof of concept for a faster, more adaptive model of developing longevity therapies — one where scientific progress isn’t held back by systems built for a different era of medicine.
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