GlycanAge raises £6.5m to build hospital‑grade glycan tests
This article covers GlycanAge, a London-based biotech startup, which has raised £6.5m to advance its glycan-based diagnostics from wellness clinics into hospital settings. The funding aims to validate medical indications and develop hospital-grade tests that track inflammation-linked biological ageing, supporting clinicians and hospitals in earlier preventive care and monitoring.
GlycanAge, a biotech startup based in London, has raised £6.5m ($8.7m) to push its glycan-based diagnostics from wellness clinics into hospitals. The funding aims to validate medical indications and build hospital-grade tests that track inflammation-linked biological ageing, a signal proponents say could inform preventive care earlier than routine tests.
Why it matters
Current hospital testing is typically aimed at diagnosing existing disease rather than detecting gradual immune changes that presage chronic conditions. GlycanAge is betting that measurements of glycans—sugar molecules attached to proteins that change with inflammation and lifestyle—can provide clinicians with a more dynamic view of a patient’s biological ageing and inflammatory state. If validated in clinical settings, such tests could help monitor intervention effectiveness and personalise preventive strategies at scale.
Inside the product
GlycanAge measures glycan patterns on blood proteins to derive biomarkers linked to immune regulation and inflammation. Unlike genetic or epigenetic measures, glycans are modifiable and respond on shorter timescales to lifestyle, medication or stress, which the company says makes them suitable for longitudinal monitoring.
The technology is already used in several hundred preventive and longevity clinics to guide personalised programmes. GlycanAge has begun piloting deployment in hospital settings: St Catherine Speciality Hospital in Zagreb has adopted glycan-based biomarkers for routine cardiometabolic risk screening and is described as the first hospital to do so.
Dragan Primorac MD, Founder of St Catherine Speciality Hospital, said:
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. To truly transform care, we must complement genomic insights with modifiable biomarkers that capture real-time responses to interventions and track improvement over time. This is essential for turning personalised medicine into actionable, preventative healthcare.
The new capital will be used to package the technology into indication-specific diagnostic tools for areas such as cardiometabolic health, stress and resilience, weight management and hormonal health, and to develop lab-developed tests for hospitals and reference laboratories. GlycanAge operates from offices in London, and has activity in Croatia and Bulgaria.
Who are the investors?
The £6.5m round was led by Fifth Quarter Ventures. Participants include Guinness Ventures, BrightCap Ventures, South Central Ventures, Impetus Capital, Vesna Deep Tech VC and Lightfield Equity. Existing backers LaunchHub Ventures and Kadmos Capital also took part.
Investors are supporting the company’s push to clinicialise glycan biomarkers and to generate the clinical validation data needed for hospital adoption and regulatory pathways. The mix of venture firms and specialist deep-tech funds reflects interest in diagnostics that can be operationalised in clinical workflows rather than remaining consumer wellness products.
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Founder perspective
GlycanAge was co-founded by Professor Gordan Lauc, CSO, a glycobiology researcher with more than 30 years’ work on links between glycans, inflammation and ageing, and by his daughter Nikolina Lauc, CEO, who has led several ventures focused on commercialising scientific discoveries for public health. The leadership positions the company at the intersection of academic research and commercial diagnostic development.
The bigger picture
This deal sits within a broader trend of UK and European investment in diagnostics and ageing-related tools that aim to shift healthcare from reactive treatment to prevention and monitoring. Glycan-based biomarkers, if they prove robust in clinical validation, would join other biological ageing measures—such as epigenetic clocks and telomere assays—as tools with different time horizons and use cases. The outcome will depend on clinical validation, integration into care pathways and how quickly hospitals adopt tests that change clinical decision making.
The funding underlines ongoing appetite among biotech investors for diagnostic technologies that claim clear clinical utility, and it will be worth watching how GlycanAge translates research-grade biomarkers into tests that meet hospital requirements across the UK and Europe.
They've invested in GlycanAge
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| Investor | Sector | Stage | Activity | Team | Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Fifth Quarter Ventures | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 Guiness Asset Management (Guinness Ventures) | 4 investments investments | 1 contact contact | |||
 BrightCap Ventures | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 South Central Ventures | 2 investments investments | 7 contacts contacts | |||
 Impetus Capital | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 Vesna Deep Tech VC | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 Lightfield Equity | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 LaunchHub Ventures | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 Kadmos Capital | 9 investments investments | 2 contacts contacts |
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