Family

A Pipeline of Therapies Heading Towards the Clinic

Our majority-owned therapeutics division (JuvRx) is on a mission to prolong the period of life spent in health (Healthspan) with novel therapeutics that target the underlying causes of age-related disease.

JuvRx Roadmap and Clinical Timelines

JuvRx Highlights

First-in-Class Oral PAI-1 Inhibitor to Reduce Fibrosis and Mortality

Unlocking the potential of serpin biology to treat chronic and devastating fibrotic and inflammatory diseases of aging.

This program is focused on developing novel serine protease-based therapies (“Serpins”) for the treatment of fibrosis and fibroproliferative disorders. The team has developed deep proprietary expertise in the biology of Serpins, a class of proteins associated with coronary heart disease, thrombosis, and chronic fibrotic and inflammatory diseases. Serpins have historically been a challenging target for pharmaceutical development, but the team has shown that they can successfully use their proprietary high throughput screening platform to find novel drug candidates.

The company was founded at the University of Michigan by Dr. Daniel A. Lawrence, PhD, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine. The lead program is a first-in-class orally available plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) inhibitor. Extensive scientific evidence points clearly to PAI-1’s involvement in fibrosis and thrombosis. By successfully targeting PAI-1, we aim to provide a powerful new tool for the treatment of these common and devastating diseases of aging.

For more information, visit MDITherapeutics.com.

Novel Biologics and Small Molecules Targeting GDF15 and Activin A to Restore Youthful Cell Signaling

This program is focused on developing novel biologic and small molecule drugs to modulate specific members of the TGF-β superfamily, for the treatment of orphan and common diseases of high unmet medical need.

Aging drives the chronic diseases that are the biggest burden on the medical system, and the team has built a compelling case around modulating defined genetically validated drivers of metabolic dysfunction. Both targets are part of the SASP (Senescence associated secretory phenotype), strongly correlated with age and frailty.

This program was founded by Dr. Margaret Jackson, who has led multiple teams and drug discovery efforts in her twenty-year career as a drug developer.

For more information, visit BYOMassTx.com.

First-in-Class Oral CD38 Inhibitor to Reverse Inflammation in Rheumatoid Arthritis 

Taking a very important first step in Juvenescence’s model to create collaborations between basic scientists and drug developers.

This program is a Joint Venture between Juvenescence and The Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

This drug development effort is centered around NAD+ metabolism. There is ample evidence that NAD+ depletion is a key feature of aging. The program's core IP will surround a novel target within NAD+ metabolism to increase levels of NAD+ within the tissue.

For more information, visit NapaTherapeutics.com.

First-in-Class Pharma Grade Ketones to Improve the Aging Heart

Developing first-in-class therapies that improve the well-being of patients with heart disease.

This drug development effort will focus on developing novel ketone-based therapies for the treatment of heart diseases, in particular heart failure.

This program combines the deep proprietary expertise in the science of ketones along with an extensive library of novel compounds from The Buck Institute of Aging with the strong science and extensive drug discovery and development experience from Juvenescence.

By focusing on ketones, the team will develop first-in-class therapies with a novel mechanism that improves the well-being of the patient with heart disease.

First-in-Class Plasmalogen Lipids to Maintain Cognitive Health

Proprietary IP-protected plasmalogen precursor that helps maintain membrane integrity and restore normal cell function.

Using AI of advanced omics data sets to identify endogenous mediators to health. Our first example of this is an oral precursor to a phospholipid subclass that a deficiency is highly predictive of the onset of cardiometabolic and neurological disease.

Other Juvenescence investments beyond Rx  

BHB Therapeutics

Focusing on novel approaches to inducing a state of ketosis, which support healthy aging.

This program is a Joint Venture between Juvenescence and The Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

The focus is novel approaches to inducing a state of ketosis. Ketosis is the state where the body burns fat instead of carbohydrates, increasing the production of anti-inflammatory ketone bodies.

The work is based on the research in the labs of Drs. Eric Verdin, MD and John Newman, MD, PhD. This work centers on the emerging signaling functions of a metabolite created by the body during fasting or exercise, the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB). They have discovered that BHB helps the body respond to stresses, and that long-term exposure to ketone bodies following a ketogenic diet can support healthy lifespan in model systems.

This effort is part of our continuing commitment to develop and bring products to consumers supported by strong evidence of providing scientific benefit to an aging population.

BOPZ Nutrition

This program is the Joint venture between Juvenescence and The Buck Institute for Research on Aging developing proprietary ketone esters in the companion animal nutritional feed market.

Chrysea

Focusing on novel approaches to induce autophagy, which is critical for maintaining cell-health, renewal, and survival.

The company focus is developing the highest quality supplement of its kind to induce autophagy, the body’s cell recycling program. Autophagy is essential for good health but declines with age. It is a process on how cells recycle and get rid of damaged structures, which is critical for maintaining cell-health, renewal, and survival.

The work is led by Dr. Pedro de Noronha Pissarra, PhD, and centers on developing healthy lifespan nutritional interventions aimed at ameliorating this natural occurring anti-aging mechanism and supporting it with rigorous clinical research.

Our work with Chrysea is a part of our continuing commitment to develop and bring products to consumers supported by strong evidence of providing scientific benefit to an aging population.

For more information, visit chrysealabs.com.

LyGenesis

Developing a technology platform that will allow patients to regrow tissues in their own body, revolutionizing the transplant market.

A spinout from University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the revolutionary technology enables the use of a patient’s own lymph nodes to act as bioreactors to regrow functioning ectopic organs including liver, kidney, thymus, and pancreas.

The initial target for clinical development is liver regeneration, with a focus on helping patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) using a hepatocyte cell therapy product implanted into periduodenal lymph nodes.

The revolutionary technology allows a single donated liver to act as the seed for dozens of transplants using outpatient endoscopy to engraft the cells. These allogeneic hepatocytes engraft, vascularize, and perform all of the functions typical to liver tissue, enabling them to rescue patients from ESLD.

This innovative work could revolutionize the transplant market, allowing patients to potentially avoid a liver transplant, or extending the lifespan of those ineligible for a liver transplant.

Classified as a cell therapy by the FDA, this represents a near-term, real world example of regenerative medicine. Moreover, the ability of its organogenesis platform to regenerate functioning thymus, pancreas and renal tissues opens up a broad array of potential clinical indications. Second generation therapies using gene-modified cells could help to create off-the-shelf therapies, which could reduce or eliminate the need for immune suppression.

For more information visit: lygenesis.com/.

Morphoceuticals

Developing technology that will allow patients to regrow tissues in their own body, possibly revolutionizing the transplant market.

The mission is to establish a basis for limb regeneration and discovery of novel regenerative interventions.

This revolutionary science originated from the work of co-founders Dr. Michael Levin, PhD and Dr. David Kaplan, PhD at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. Our focus is on a revolutionary understanding of the biophysical mechanisms that implement decision-making during complex pattern regulation. We use bioelectric dynamics to change developmental patterning and spur regeneration in organisms that do not regenerate tissues or organs.

The team is building a next-generation AI platform to map top-down control of pattern regulation. Levin’s lab has been able to cause limb regeneration in a variety of animals. The team is initiating research to translate this progress from lower animals to mammals.

The frontier of regenerative medicine is a promising market that, estimated at $23 billion in 2018, is expected to increase to $150 billion by 2026.

For more information, visit morphoceuticals.com.

Relation Therapeutics

Leveraging powerful machine learning techniques to cure disease faster.

Relation discovers new biology to cure disease faster, transforming the traditional R&D model: because patients are waiting. Integral to this, Relation combines the power of active-graph machine learning and large-scale, high-quality data that describes disease biology to find better ways of targeting human pathology.

Relation generates proprietary maps of disease in humans, leveraging human genetics, single-cell omics and perturbational data, so that these powerful models can be deployed at last. Relation’s platform sits in an integrated wet-lab, dry-lab, translational science loop, located in London.

For more information, visit relationrx.com.

Souvien Therapeutics

Dementia and neurodegenerative conditions are a tremendous burden on our healthcare system and economy.

This program is focused on developing novel therapeutic agents to modulate critical epigenetic mechanisms associated with neurodegeneration.

The drug discovery strategy is based on a substantial body of data implicating a critical epigenetic regulator of cellular aging in neurodegeneration. The goal is to use that knowledge, and the greatly evolving understanding of aging, to bring new medicines into human trials.