Modern healthcare is good at treating disease, but far weaker at spotting risk early. Most hospital tests show what is already wrong, not how fast the body is ageing or whether chronic inflammation is quietly building up.
This gap makes preventive care difficult and leaves doctors with limited tools to track how lifestyle or treatment choices are actually working over time. London-based biotech startup GlycanAge believes it has a way to close that gap.
The UK startup raised $8.7 million in a latest funding round led by Fifth Quarter Ventures, with participation from Guinness Ventures, BrightCap Ventures, South Central Ventures, Impetus Capital, Vesna Deep Tech VC, and Lightfield Equity.
Existing backers, including LaunchHub Ventures and Kadmos Capital, also joined the round.
A new way to measure biological ageing
GlycanAge was co-founded by father-daughter duo Professor Gordan Lauc (CSO), a glycobiology pioneer with over 30 years of research on the links between glycans and inflammation and ageing, and Nikolina Lauc (CEO), a serial entrepreneur focused on commercialising science for public health.
Their mission centres on empowering personalised preventive healthcare by making glycan biomarkers accessible, turning complex biology into actionable steps for healthier ageing; they started the company to bridge lab discoveries to real-world use after Gordan’s decades of foundational work.
Today, the technology is already used in hundreds of preventive and longevity clinics to guide personalised health programmes. The company has begun deploying its technology in hospital settings. St. Catherine Speciality Hospital in Zagreb is using glycan-based biomarkers for routine cardiometabolic risk screening, becoming the first hospital globally to do so.
“Together with genetics, the concept of personalised medicine requires a dynamic approach. Genomics provides the blueprint of where we begin, but health is not static—it evolves with time, environment, and lifestyle. To truly transform care, we must complement genomic insights with modifiable biomarkers: biological signals that capture real-time responses to interventions and track improvement longitudinally. This synergy between genomics and adaptive biomarkers is the cornerstone for turning personalised medicine from a descriptive concept into actionable, measurable, and preventative healthcare.” — Dragan Primorac, MD, Founder of St Catherine Speciality Hospital.
Unlike epigenetic clocks (e.g., TruAge, NOVOS Age, which use DNA methylation for long-term trends) or telomere tests, glycans capture modifiable immune responses, positioning GlycanAge as complementary to inflammation/stress monitoring rather than a direct rival to TruDiagnostic or Tally Health.
What’s next?
The new capital will be used to develop hospital-ready diagnostic products, validate new medical uses, and expand access to glycan testing for clinicians worldwide. With the funding, the UK company will further develop its key clinical applications, including tools for stress and resilience, cardiometabolic health, weight management and hormones, and package them into indication-specific products for practitioners.
In parallel, the company plans to validate selected diagnostic indications and develop its first lab-developed tests (LDTs) for use in hospital and reference laboratory settings.
At present, GlycanAge operates across London, Croatia, and Bulgaria.
