Dmitry Kaminskiy and Eric Kihlstrom Deliver Presentation on Longevity at the
Reform Club in London
On 7th May 2019 Dmitry Kaminskiy, Managing Partner at Deep Knowledge Ventures and Founder of Aging Analytics Agency, together with Eric Kihlstrom, Director of Aging Analytics Agency, delivered a presentation on the emerging Longevity industry at the London's Reform Club, a traditional meeting place of influential adherents to progressive political ideas for almost two centuries, which serves as a very strong indicator of just how mainstream the topic of Longevity has become. It is also notable that just two hours before their talk, Kaminskiy and Kihlstrom also spoke at the official launch event for the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity in UK Parliament.
At the Reform Club, they introduced the Longevity industry as a convergence between geroscience (the science of ageing and longevity), regenerative medicine (the technology for restoring damaged or aged tissues and organs), and P4 Medicine: personalised, precision, participative and preventive medicine (together representing an overall paradigm shift toward more preventive and individualised treatments), and innovative financial system along with policies for boosting the economic productivity and lengthening the working life of the elderly people. They then laid bare the industry's key components: the scientists, journalists, research labs and political and media influencers that comprise the fledgeling industry.
The Reform Club itself has no shortage of influencers. Current members include diplomats, members of parliament, politicians, academics and lawyers, and it has long been linked in the collective British imagination with enlightened causes and political breakthroughs. Formed in the wake of the UK 1832-year reforms, it acted as the nerve centre and headquarters of the fledgeling Liberal Party. Past members include prime ministers Winston Churchill and Lloyd George, novelists EM Forster and Henry James and writer of detective fiction Arthur Conan Doyle. The author and futurist Jules Verne even chose it as the setting for the wager that sent his fictional hero Phileas Fogg around the world in 80 days.
Kaminskiy has been actively involved in the Longevity field since 2013, when he met a number of prominent geroscientists. While the majority of mainstream investors still considered the field as fringe at the time, Kaminskiy saw it as the future, and as a reality whose emergence was inevitable. This was when he decided to do whatever he could to help its realization happen sooner rather than later through numerous professional activities, including the launch of Deep Knowledge Ventures and its 2014 investment into a number of Longevity companies, his joining the UK charity Biogerontology Research Foundation as Managing Trustee, and his founding of Aging Analytics Agency.
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Since then, these organizations have gone on to make substantial progress in helping the Longevity Industry rise to its current status of mainstream prominence, including the 2014 prediction of the industry's boom and unprecedented growth in 2017, the production of first-of-their-kind analytical reports and global landscape overviews of the Longevity industry, and more recently, their critical support during the initial stages of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity's launch (as its primary initial financial supporter in the case of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, and as its main source of data and analytics in the case of Aging Analytics Agency). Aging Analytics Agency's activities in the realms of governance, politics and the financial industry in particular have also been bolstered over the past year due to the appointment of Eric Kihlstrom, former Director of the UK Government led Healthy Ageing Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, as its new Director.
During their talk, Kaminskiy and Kihlstrom noted that whereas a mere 4 years ago the prospect of radical healthy life extension was considered a remote prospect and fringe concern, it is now considered a political priority. In fact, only hours before presenting at the Reform Club, Kaminskiy and Kihlstrom has convened with parliamentarians, policy directors and researchers at the UK Houses of Parliament, to participate in the inaugural meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity to discuss key goals for the group’s strategic agenda for the coming year.