Novel Approaches to Drug Development in Longevity Biotech Offer Fresh Perspectives [Longevity Summit 2022]

Estimating the research and development costs of pharmaceuticals is a highly contentious research topic, given the variability of drug types, targets, and mechanism novelty (among many other factors). But in short, developing drugs is a uniquely long, expensive, and high-risk endeavor relative to most. A ballpark range for developing a single FDA-approved pharmaceutical can cost from around $150 million to $4.54 billion over the course of 3-20 years.

Furthermore, chronic, age-related diseases that are uniquely human are particularly challenging and resource-intensive to develop treatments for. The reasons for this are many but could be (maybe unduly) summarized by the fact that traditional drug development was not designed for chronic, insidious, multi-factorial disease modeling. Sprinkling a bunch of drugs on a mold to see which one kills it just doesn't draw many parallels with identifying drugs that can stave off a chronic disease (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, cancer, kidney failure, sarcopenia, arteriosclerosis, osteoporosis) or even death in humans 5, 10, 20, 30, or even 30 years in the future. See 1Pager?"Longevity Science Lost in Translation," for more on this topic.

In follow-up to The Longevity Summit hosted by Longevity Global at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging , I wanted to highlight some of the new biotechs bringing novel approaches and perspectives toward drug development in aging and geroscience.

Fauna Bio - Ashley Zehnder (Founder & CEO): In acknowledging that we cannot truly “humanize” mice or any other animal to recreate a human disease state, Dr Zehnder proposed that studying exotic species with exceptional resilience to stress and disease may be a more fruitful approach. In other words (mine, not her's), instead of trying to make them more like us, why not identify ones that do something physiologically envious and develop drugs make us more like them. Read more about their approach at: https://www.faunabio.com/

Loyal - Celine Halioua (Founder & CEO): Dogs are not your typical lab "model organism". The thousands of breeds and their "best friend status" actually begin to resemble the diversity of human genetics and behavior. In other words, they share similar genetic diversity, lifestyle, and environmental factors as humans, except they age 5-10x as fast. Also, let's face it, many people take their companion to the vet more frequently than they themselves for a checkup.?In her talk, Celine Halioua?from?Loyal?describes the market opportunity and regulatory strategy for getting a lifespan therapy approved in dogs - and how the endeavor could serve as a bridge to human lifespan extension. https://loyalfordogs.com/

Cosmica Biosciences - David Furman (Co-founder, CEO): The clinical conditions and molecular signatures observed in astronauts largely resemble those observed during normal aging on the ground, but at an accelerated pace. Cosmica combines state-of-the-art experimental approaches (multi-omics) using human organoids (lab-grown mini-organs) and immune cells, data from crew members, and large aging cohort databases, all integrated using artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to identify novel targets and respective compounds to prevent or reverse age-related decline, but at an accelerated pace. https://www.cosmica.bio/

Arda Therapeutics - Adam Freund (Founder, CEO): Arda is taking aim at chronic diseases and aging by eliminating the cells that drive disease. This may seem pretty mundane at first glance. However, the traditional method for non-cancer therapeutics is to alter the cell signaling of diseased cells, not eliminate them altogether. This metaphor isn’t Adam-approved, but I think this strategy could be summed up as isolating the provocateurs from a rally rather than trying to conduct crowd control among an angry mob. Arda is focused on “cells not pathways” in therapeutic development. https://www.ardatherapeutics.com/

All-in-all it's great to see scientific creativity bringing new approaches to age-old problems.