A gleaming life science campus on the San Francisco Peninsula has landed its first tenant, a longevity startup that purports to test — and ultimately reverse — one’s true “biological age.”
Fresh from landing $11 million in seed funding, startup Generation Lab has moved into 12,300-square-foot lab and office digs at The Landing in Burlingame, a twin-building campus that features amenities including a café, a fitness center and more than half a million square feet of lab and office space in the heart of the Bay Area’s biotech hub.
The biotech real estate project by King Street Properties and Helios Real Estate Partners finished construction last year. The buildings at 1699 and 1701 Bayshore Highway are billed in marketing materials as “the ultimate destination for driven and innovative scientists who are passionate about exploring the uncharted territories of tomorrow’s challenges.”
But The Landing faces the same challenges that bedevil owners of millions of square feet of life science real estate in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Like Boston and San Diego, these biotech hubs overbuilt in response to fierce demand for such space several years ago that subsequently dwindled amid rising interest rates and shrinking research funding.
Just a few years ago, tenants would have been clamoring to lease premier life science space on the Bay Area’s Peninsula, one of the nation's most powerful life sciences hubs that includes submarkets such as South San Francisco, San Carlos and Burlingame.
But today, Generation Lab's lease is an inaugural one for about 2.2% of a complex that has yet to gain leasing traction as the industry recovers.
Signs of life
The vacancy rate in San Francisco’s flex/R&D segment increased from 7% in 2022 to more than 22% in 2024. Since then, fresh worries have been triggered by President Donald Trump’s freeze last year on thousands of federal research grants.
However, signs show a gradual return to growth in the Bay Area’s life science sector with several new leases signed in recent months. Last year, Revolution Medicines took 50,000 square feet at 600 Saginaw Drive in Redwood City; Cellares signed a new lease for 92,600 square feet at 1120 Veterans Blvd. in South San Francisco; and in January, the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging signed a 95,000-square-foot lease in a new building at 1300 Main St. in Redwood City.
CoStar Senior Director of Market Analytics Nigel Hughes wrote last year that the vacancy rate is set to remain elevated for a while longer, with millions of square feet of life science space still available in San Francisco, 15% of which was sublet space.
Analysts have noted that although industrywide biotech vacancies remain elevated by historical standards, there are signs of heightened long-term demand for life science space. Life sciences vacancy in the Bay Area declined in the fourth quarter of 2025 as leasing activity surged, according to CBRE Research. Leasing activity in that time totaled 1.2 million square feet, with 87% of deals taking place on the San Francisco Peninsula.
'Pioneering the future'
Launched in 2023, Generation Lab was so named because the founding team spans three generations: Alina Rui Su, now the CEO; University of California Berkeley aging researcher Irina Conboy; and COO Michael Suswal. The three have argued that society is on the cusp of an “ageless generation,” where people will be able to remain active for longer periods and linger around a “biological 30.”
“We’re already pioneering the future of longevity diagnostics through our SystemAge™ platform, which serves over 400 clinic partners worldwide,” Su said in a statement. “The Landing presented an opportunity to quickly meet our growth needs, and its specialized workspaces and amenities offer a great new home for our team.”
The company is backed by funding from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel Partners, Samsung and others.
Conboy has said she is building on new research to take longevity breakthroughs from the lab straight to consumers, “not just to measure aging, but to reverse it,” the firm said in a statement.
The owners of The Landing note that the property "enables firms to do their best work," Sonia Taneja, managing director overseeing West Coast projects for King Street, said in a statement. It "provides the amenities, light-filled workplace and access to the outdoors that today’s employees want and need.”
JLL is handling leasing at the property.