NeuroAge wants to reprogram your brain back to a younger state

Startup seeks new biomarkers as it develops cellular reprogramming drugs designed to reverse brain aging and combat dementia.

Last month, Californian cellular reprogramming startup NeuroAge Therapeutics revealed it had received $250,000 in funding from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s Diagnostics Accelerator – a $100 million global research initiative funded by philanthropists including Leonard A Lauder, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott, the Dolby family, and The Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, among others.

With the aim of developing and validating biomarkers for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, the accelerator supports research initiatives and companies like NeuroAge, which is working to identify new biomarkers as part of its mission to design personalized reprogramming therapeutics capable of reversing brain aging.

My take on this: When it comes to the treatment of Alzheimer’s and dementia, the pharma industry has long been focused on the strategy of removing toxic proteins from brain cells. While this has yielded some success, it is based on a reactive, uniform approach that often happens after irreversible damage has already occurred. Berkeley-based NeuroAge was founded to pursue a new way: targeting brain aging itself. The company aims to leverage new biomarkers of brain aging to develop personalized treatments that can begin earlier, and before irreversible damage to the brain occurs. To find out more about the company’s approach, we spoke to co-founder and CEO Dr Christin Glorioso.

Reflecting on the recent progress in Alzheimer’s drug development, Glorioso, a trained neuroscientist who founded NeuroAge with Dr Priyanka Joshi, feels that the excitement over the FDA’s recent approval of lecanemab should be tempered a little.

“It only improves cognition by about 30% and works better for people that are in early stages of the disease – plus there are bad side effects, including brain bleeding and swelling in about 20% of people,” she says. “So, families around the country, including my own [Glorioso has an aunt who’s currently suffering with Alzheimer’s] are wondering, is this worth it? And I think, for a lot of people, it isn’t.”

Get further insights into the inefficiency of targeting amyloid, reprogramming brain aging, and exploring beyond Yamanaka factors straight from Dr Christin Glorioso right HERE.

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