Longevity company Biophysical Therapeutics emerges from stealth

Computational biology platform company plays it cool with a pipeline of experimentally-validated new drugs.

Biophysical Therapeutics, a drug discovery platform company that leverages computational biology, has emerged from stealth. The primary targets of the Delaware-based company are cancer, the diseases of aging (including Alzheimer’s disease) and – excitingly – aging itself.

Founded by Dr Michael Forrest, a Cambridge University biochemistry graduate with a PhD in computer science, Biophysical Therapeutics boasts renowned biotech entrepreneur Professor George Church (of Harvard Medical School) as an advisor to the company. Professor Bruno Conti of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California is also an advisor.

My take on this: Back in 2006, Conti and his team reported an exciting result in the prestigious journal Science. They showed (in female mice) that slightly reducing the metabolic rate by slightly reducing metabolic heat generation (decreasing body temperature by 0.34°C) increased lifespan by 20%.

Perhaps relatedly, calorie restriction, which is well known to extend the lifespan of (at least) mice, causes a slight decrease in body temperature in mice and humans. Moreover, different humans can vary in resting metabolic rate (per unit mass) and resting body temperature, wherein those with lower values live significantly longer. It definitely seems to be a case of less is more – in this case, making metabolic rate less can extend the lifespan of worms, flies, wasps, fish, mice and probably many other species.

As so often seems to be the case, metabolism is a finely-balanced biological process that has something of a double-edged sword nature to it, so we were glad to catch up with Dr Forrest to understand more about about that process and how Biophysical Therapeutics plans to leverage that knowledge.

Get to know more about Biophysical Therapeutics HERE.

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