Tally Health Raises $10M, Attracts Celebrity Investors with its Anti-Aging Kit
The consumer biotech company wants to extend longevity with its at-home diagnostic tests and personalized interventions to combat aging
Consider it anti-aging delivered right to your door.
Tally Health, a biotech company aiming to change the way we age, has introduced an at-home diagnostic test with personalized interventions to address the aging process.
The biotech startup, co-founded by Dr. David Sinclair, just raised $10 million in its age-fighting endeavors.
The seed funding, led by Forerunner Ventures and L Catterton, included several celebrity investors including Pedro Pascal, Zac Efron, Shonda Rimes, Kevin Hart, Rich Roll, Whitney Cummings, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen. Kirsten Green, founding partner of Forerunner Ventures, will join Tally Health’s board of directors, which the anti-aging company says will be a majority female board.
There are currently over 250,000 consumers on Tally Health’s waiting list who are interested in improving their health and longevity.
Dr. Sinclair, a widely regarded expert on aging and human longevity, says Tally Health can improve healthspan and extend longevity on a cellular level. He says recent research suggests that cellular aging may be driven by changes to the “epigenome,” which aids in reading the DNA code.
Sinclair also serves as a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School.
“DNA is no longer the sole predictor of our destiny or longevity. Our genetics determines less than 10% of our longevity; more than 90% is a result of our daily lifestyle choices and environment, and much of the research and interventions in the near future will be focused on extending the human health span,” said Dr. Sinclair. “The interest in aging has sparked massive research insights in the field globally and propelled the science of aging to a new level.”
Dr. Sinclair and his team had a scientific study published in Cell, where 13 years of research demonstrated that epigenetic changes can be safely reversed in mice to improve the function of tissues.
While aging is unavoidable, there is a difference between biological and chronological age – and there is a list of hallmarks of aging. The 12 hallmarks (including chronic inflammation, stem cell exhaustion and genomic instability) provide a blueprint for slowing down the aging process, says TallyHealth.
The Tally kit enables customers to determine their biological age (TallyAge) through an at-home cheek swab test. Tally Health then analyzes genetic modifications that change throughout aging and reflect lifestyle habits using a biological aging clock and a next-gen DNA analysis procedure.
Tally Health says its clock has been “trained” on the largest and most diverse consumer DNA dataset for adult human buccal tissue. The test analyzes the amount of epigenetic DNA modifications that change with aging and lifestyle choices before a TallyAge is calculated using the system’s machine learning model.
Membership includes quarterly biological age testing, personalized insights and actionable lifestyle recommendations to help consumers reduce their TallyAge. Members will also receive Vitality, a daily longevity supplement that the company says boosts cellular defense mechanisms and reduces the effects of aging.
Tally Health offers three membership options: three-month, six-month, and 12-month subscriptions. Individual TallyAge tests are also available for $229 without a subscription.
The biotech company is led by CEO Melanie Goldey, a health tech operator with a background at TMRW Life Sciences, Refinery29, and Everyday Health.
“We built Tally to be the science-backed, health ally for anyone looking to improve their healthspan and increase longevity,” said Goldey. “Age is just a number – that you can now change.”
