The Exeter Entrepreneur: SENISCA

SENISCA has developed new approaches to reverse cellular senescence, which occurs when a cell is in a cell-cycle arrest and can no longer multiply. They realised that they can turn back the ageing clock in old cells through RNA splicing.

In 2020, the SENISCA company was founded by the expert co-founder team, Chief Scientific Officer Professor Lorna Harries, Chief Technical Officer Dr Ben Lee and Chief Executive Officer Kirsty Semple.

Tori Hammond, IIB lead, worked alongside the team to help patent their product, gather investment and get the spin-out company incorporated. She introduced them to SETsquared Exeter, the three times number one global university incubator, where they took part in the Scale-up programme.

Earlier this year, they successfully secured a huge £1.3M from private investors, placing them securely as front-runners in the development of medicine that targets the causes and effects of ageing.

In November 2019, SENISCA also went on to apply to the SETsquared Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research (ICURe) Programme. Funded by Innovate UK, ICURe trains, funds and supports teams led by university early-career researchers (ECRs). Through this programme, SENISCA determined which market they should target to utilise their research, science and technology.