Ahead of his appearance at Longevity Investors Conference, Nir Barzilai talks gerotherapeutics and choosing the right drugs for aging.
Take a unique mix of investors, scientists and entrepreneurs, a longevity-focused agenda packed with keynotes, panels and networking and put them in a glorious Swiss setting and you have the Longevity Investors Conference.
Kicking off later this month on 24th September in Gstaad, this year’s LIC boasts an extended agenda with numerous networking opportunities running over 2.5 days. LIC always boasts a stellar line-up of longevity key opinion leaders, and this means that program discusses the latest trends and developments, and connects investors with state-of-the-art scientific progress.
Longevity.Technology: This is the fifth edition of LIC, and one person who has been at the conference year-on-year is Director of the Einstein Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and President of the Academy for Health and Lifespan Research Nir Barzilai. Ahead of his LIC presentation on Can we grow older without growing sicker?, we sat down with Dr Barzilai to get his take on the conference, advancements in the longevity space and the three FDA-approved drugs out-performing GLP-1 inhibitors on the gerotherapeutic scale.
Nir Barzilai on…
Gerotherapeutics and the fantastic four
I want to highlight something new that happened to us without anybody noticing. A drug is gerotherapeutic if it has been shown to affect the hallmarks of aging, and the hallmarks of aging are all related – you might think you’re targeting metabolism, but you’re actually improving immunity as well. There are 12 drugs that affect the hallmarks of aging in animals preclinical studies, extending the healthspan and also the lifespan of the animals. But there are only four drugs that do this in humans. In humans, what we want to see in a clinical study is a drug that was designed for one indication, also affects other diseases or medical problems and finally, to see a drug that over a five year project is shown to decrease overall mortality – not disease specific mortality, but overall mortality.
We measure gerotherapeutics on a scale out of 12 – the one that gets 12 points is SGLT2 inhibitors, an anti-diabetic drug which is prescribed much more for non-diabetic patients, for both preventive of deterioration in kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. The other drugs are metformin on 11 points, biphosphonates for osteoporosis, 11 points, and 10 points is GLP-1 inhibitors. These are four, FDA-approved drugs. FDA-approved drugs have safety, they have efficacy, they have years of use.
If a doctor has a patient who want to do something about their aging, there is a decision on which drug to choose. Perhaps GLP-1 is not the right choice for a thin patient, or if the patient has osteoporosis, maybe start with biphosphonates, or if they have kidney disease, maybe start with SGLT2. We have to choose the right drugs for the right people and start educating doctors. You can prescribe those drugs and they’ll have real effects – I’ll be talking more about this in Gstaad.
Repurposing drugs is good. Give GLP-1 inhibitors to diabetics and they also lose weight. So now it’s an obesity drug. When you give it for obesity, it prevents cardiovascular disease, it prevents Parkinson’s, it prevents hepatic steatosis, and GLP-1 inhibitors are also affecting other diseases in a way that’s not related to the obesity. Almost every week The New England Journal of Medicine details some trial with some GLP-1, more specific or less specific.
Looking forward to LIC
The Longevity Investors Conference is terrific. There are investors that I’ve consulted with, one of whom I am helping to spend $10 million just initially this year! So I sense the excitement and I sense the persistence and I sense that there are newcomers, too. And I predict that they’re all going to be really happy not only in Gstaad but in coming into the longevity area. The longevity space has a lot of hopes, and some of them will become promises. We have the most interesting story and I’m sure that once they’re in the field, investors will make money if they stay with us.
100 not out
Understanding healthy aging is also important for investors. One of the things I’ve been doing is a longitudinal study collecting 750 families of centenarians, their children and the people who are married to them. Centenarians have what we call longevity genes, and it is as important to find the underlying genetics of exceptional longevity as it is for disease; pharmaceuticals who usually trusted investigators based on what they saw in mice have realized that you have to have a confirmation from human genetics and that’s how you get the drug faster and get a drug that will be effective.
PCSK09 is one of the examples of that. We’re looking for longevity genes in centenarians not only for the mechanism, but also from a drug development perspective. And in fact, my study has been used to develop two drugs. One is a CTP inhibitor by Merck and one is an ApoC-III inhibitor by Ionis as an example. So, this data is important and it connects straight to biotech. One of the things that we found is that some centenarians have mutation in SIRT6. SIRT6 is actually the sirtuin that when you target really extends healthspan and longevity in both sexes. You know, we were busy with SIRT1 and resveratrol, but it’s actually the SIRT6 that does it!
I’m on the board of a company that’s developing a 36-base treatment that is mRNA based and can actually deliver drugs, deliver RNA to the liver. The genetics is really important in order firstly to see if the pathway is relevant to humans – some of the pathways in mice haven’t been relevant to human – and second, because human genetic data is really crucial for the development of drugs.
Don’t miss out!
The Longevity Investors Conference 2024 is an event not to be missed for those looking to stay at the forefront of the rapidly-evolving longevity space, offering the perfect environment to gain a deeper understanding of the field, discover the latest breakthroughs and make meaningful connections with leading figures in the industry.
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