Translating Aging Safe & Synergistic Combination Drugs to Promote Healthy Aging (Ann Beliën, Rejuvenate BioMed)
In this episode of the BioAge podcast, Ann Beliën joins Chris Patil today to share the story behind Rejuvenate Biomed, and her journey into the longevity sector. She started her career at Johnson & Johnson after receiving her postdoctoral degree, and during her tenure, she worked in scientific, operational, and strategic roles. Twenty years later, she became the founder and CEO of Rejuvenate Biomed, a Belgian company evaluating combinations of safe and synergistic drugs that target physical decline and promote healthy aging.
One of Rejuvenate’s main focus areas is sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass and strength during aging. When muscle decay starts to prevent people from leaving the house and living a quality life, mental health and quality of life decline rapidly. The company’s first combination therapy to reach clinical trials, currently in a Phase 1b study, will be initially tested as a treatment for this complex disease. More clinical trials are in the works, with two new combinations entering preclinical trials next year.
The Finer Details of This Episode:
- Longevity sector outside the U.S.
- Working for Johnson and Johnson
- Rejuvenate BioMed’s in silico analysis
- The complexity of sarcopenia as a disease
- Phase 2 clinical trials
- The funding environment
Quotes:
““If we want to do something in the longevity space, we need to provide the product in a chronic fashion, and safety is of course very important. So, why not start from something that already has a proven safety record?”
“The company is first identifying individual drugs that have interesting properties with respect to aging, and then trying to devise novel combinations of them that can be used to treat age related diseases.”
“Aging is not currently an endpoint that can be used as a trial outcome. So to bring drugs to trial, we have to identify appropriate clinical indications.”
“People with sarcopenia are not able anymore to go to the store, to leave their house. And the social impact is huge… they become isolated.”
“We want to have functional, happy people that are living their lives to their fullest potential for convenience.”
“We want to learn as much as possible also from the technical perspective, which can be an added benefit not only to the company, but also to the community on the comparisons of these different methods of measuring muscle mass.”
“I think we've also seen that in the United States, where the biggest science story of all of our lifetimes, the COVID pandemic, revealed the importance of thinking hard about diseases that disproportionately affect older people, and the broader ramifications of that for the rest of the population.”
“Your advisors should be representing different aspects, different ways of thinking and different challenges. So our advisory boards are always very interesting, because you get all these different perspectives.”
“In the aging field, people always dive deep and figure out the positive side and do the learning and just pull it through. And that's what I really like.”
Links:
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Translating Aging on Twitter: @bioagepodcast
BIOAGE Labs Website BIOAGELabs.com
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BIOAGE Labs LinkedIn
Rejuvenate Biomed Homepage: rejuvenatebiomed.com