Empowered Patient Podcast Developing Long COVID Fatigue Oral Treatment Using Endogenous Molecules with Bill Hinshaw Axcella Therapeutics
Bill Hinshaw is the President and CEO of Axcella Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company founded by Flagship Pioneering, Founder of Moderna. Using their platform to create compositions of endogenous metabolic modulators, EMMs, Axcella has generated two liver programs including 1125 for treating NASH. Preclinical and clinical data led them to test 1125 for long COVID fatigue in conjunction with Dr. Betty Raman Senior Clinical Research Fellow in the Radcliffe Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford.
Bill explains, "So 1125 is a composition of amino acids and their derivatives, which is put together to address specific biologies. And we have tested it all the way into phase 2b in NASH patients. And what we've seen is it has an effect on important energy aspects, so bioenergetics, along with inflammatory redox, and immune and muscle functions."
"And what happens, in this case, is that basically, the virus comes in, hijacks the mitochondria to help it reproduce or redirect its efforts towards producing more virus. And when it does that, it damages the cell itself and its ability to create energy."
"Dr. Raman likes to talk about the fact that there's a battery, think of it as a rechargeable battery but unfortunately, in this case, the battery is damaged and it can't hold its charge. And so what 1125 is looking to do is to repair the battery's processes through areas like fatty acid oxidation, ATP generation, immune enhancement, as well as inflammatory reduction."
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