The UK Space Agency has awarded grant funding (amount unspecified) to startup LinkGevity to determine whether the firm’s anti-ageing solution could work away from Earth.
The firm has been backed to prepare its anti-necrotic therapeutic for deployment in space via a unique UK-Lithuania partnership with Delta Biosciences. This UK–Lithuania partnership builds on both companies’ role as the only non-U.S. participants in NASA’s Space Health Program in 2024. Supported by the UK Space Agency and the Lithuanian Health Ministry, the project has become a flagship of pan-European collaboration.
LinkGevity and Delta recently formalized their partnership with a MoU at Life Sciences Baltics.
The project also includes a UK-hosted International Symposium on Space Health and Biotech, bringing ESA, NASA, JAXA and others together. This positions the UK to showcase how space-enabled healthcare can drive innovation, commercial growth and better patient outcomes.
We are delighted to have received this funding under the UK Space Agency’s International Bilateral Fund,” said LinkGevity co-founder and CEO, Dr .Carina Kern. “Alongside our collaborator in the venture, Delta Biosciences, a pharmaceutical stability specialist, we are tackling one of the greatest biomedical challenges of our time: ageing and the diseases it drives. Space offers an unparalleled testbed, where microgravity, cosmic radiation, and stress accelerate the same biological decline we see on Earth. By harnessing these conditions, we can fast-track the development of the world’s first therapeutic that is designed to block necrosis—uncontrolled cell death at the heart of degeneration. This breakthrough has the potential not only to transform astronaut health, but more importantly to revolutionize how we fight ageing and necrosis-driven debilitating diseases here on Earth.”
By preventing necrosis, the therapeutic could shift medicine from managing symptoms to directly intervening in decline. It offers a disease-modifying approach across conditions where current treatments fall short.
Necrosis has long been an unsolved challenge in medicine,” added Dr Kern. “Astronauts face accelerated degeneration and ageing-linked conditions and our therapeutic offers the first real chance to intervene in degeneration at its root. This award lets us prove readiness for space and transform treatment of age-related disease.”
Serena Kern-Libera, Chief Operating Officer at LinkGevity, said, “This project is aimed to build resilience in astronauts and patients alike. By blocking necrosis, we target the key driver of decline. This first-in-class therapy highlights UK leadership in biotech with global reach.”
Delta CEO, Dominykas Milasius, said, “Space creates biology’s toughest test. With LinkGevity we are advancing astronaut health and reshaping healthcare on Earth through international collaboration, driving innovations that extend human resilience on our planet and beyond.”