Health spans — not just life spans — are getting longer + Streaming players are trimming spending on new original content creation
Meet the longevity startups trying to prolong not just lifespans but also healthspans — the number of healthy years we live: After a promising UK trial, Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, intends to conduct a trial to determine whether the affordable generic diabetes med metformin can prolong life and health spans, the Financial Times reports. His trial can take anywhere between 4-6 years and cost between USD 50-75 mn. Barzilai has raised USD 22 mn so far and is still seeking further funding, which has been difficult since healthcare investors want short-term returns and governments place a high priority on disease research.
Tech b’naires have chipped in to fill this gap in funding, but that brings with a host of ethical concerns: B’naires including Jeff Bezos, Israeli entrepreneur Yuri Milner, and Google co-founders Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, through Alphabet are supporting approaches that fuse business and academia, without being constrained by the need for quick returns. Their financial support has helped startups such as Altos Labs, which was founded at the beginning of 2022 and is now one of the most widely known well-funded longevity startups. Calico Life Sciences, a 2013 startup owned by Alphabet, was one of the first of these startups established and now has three products in early clinical trials. Ethicists say that, as wealth and political influence see compound growth over time, creating longer life and health spans could potentially further widen the wealth gap between the rich and the poor over the long term.
Turbulent times for the broadcast and streaming industry: Analysts are expecting 2023 to be a year of sluggish growth for the media industry amid the global economic downturn and dwindling numbers of advertisements, Financial Times reports. Streaming platforms are expected to trim their spending on original content this year, with analysts expecting to see spending growth on this budget item growing just 2% y-o-y in 2023, down four percentage points from last year, marking the slowest rate of growth in 10 years. Streaming services are struggling to attract new subscribers, which is being made more difficult with the cutbacks on original content, the salmon-colored paper notes. This comes after the global media industry was one of the hardest-hit sectors last year, with a combined USD 500 bn wiped off the market value of the biggest companies.