As ARDD gets underway, Life Bio’s CEO explains how the conference is helping move age-targeting interventions closer to the clinic.
The Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) conference – now in its 11th year – is taking place at the University of Copenhagen this week, attracting a global gathering of researchers, academics and industry leaders. As the largest event of its kind in the biopharmaceutical industry, ARDD brings together experts dedicated to the study of aging at the micro and macro levels – and everything in-between. The discussions and workshops center around novel strategies to target the biological mechanisms of aging with the aim of extending healthspan and improving quality of life in older populations.
Longevity.Technology: As ever, in addition to its strong academic program, the conference will feature significant participation from the biotech sector, including key players like Life Biosciences. The Boston-based company is pursuing a platform approach to develop therapies aimed at reversing or preventing age-related conditions – an area of increasing focus within the industry. As one of the leading biotechs in the field, Life Bio will contribute to the conference’s broader conversation on translating scientific discoveries into effective treatments that may one day alleviate the burden of aging-related diseases. The company’s CEO Jerry McLaughlin is presenting at ARDD and chairing a series of presentations on longevity medicine, and we sat down with him to get his take on the conference and more.
McLaughlin believes that the growing global interest in healthspan, the period of a person’s life that they are in good health, is transforming the way aging is viewed – with epigenetic reprogramming and other innovative interventions at the forefront of this shift.
“At Life Bio specifically, we are focused on developing therapeutics in an area of medicine called “cellular rejuvenation”, restoring cells to a more youthful state, and we see tremendous potential for these types of interventions in evolving the field,” he says.
“The next five to 10 years will likely see significant advancements in translating these new discoveries into clinical applications. As the field evolves, we can expect more clinical trials to emerge and increased collaboration between academia and industry to get us there. These developments could lead to the mainstream adoption of treatments that fundamentally change how we approach healthcare.”
Progress towards the clinic
In his talk at ARDD, McLaughlin will discuss Life Bio’s work in epigenetic reprogramming as a potential gene therapy to restore visual function, exemplifying the company’s focus on indication areas where aging biology has a clear link to disease pathogenesis.
“There are multiple diseases in the eye that occur with aging as a major modifiable risk factor, including the two optic neuropathies on which we are initially focused: NAION and primary open angle glaucoma (POAG),” he explains. “For both conditions, there remains significant unmet needs. People with vision loss are more likely to report having depression, diabetes, hearing impairment, stroke, falls, and cognitive decline. Those with vision loss are also more likely to die prematurely.”
“Prevent Blindness America estimates that the number of people with blindness and visual impairment will double by 2030 unless actions to prevent and treat eye diseases are taken. Additionally, a recent study demonstrated a potential association between semaglutide (a GLP-1 receptor agonist) usage and NAION, yet there are currently no approved treatments for NAION, and to our knowledge no other biotech in the space is developing a treatment for NAION.”
Beyond NAION and glaucoma, McLaughlin says that Life Bio is evaluating the potential for cellular rejuvenation to treat a “broad number of diseases of aging”, citing compelling preclinical data in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia, in addition to other ophthalmic disorders including dry age-related macular degeneration and other forms of retinal degeneration.
“As of today, at Life Bio we are distinctly focused on advancing our lead therapy, ER-100, into clinical trials, with the goal of initiating human studies in the second half of 2025,” he says. “We are encouraged by our initial results, including demonstrating that ER-100 can restore visual function in a non-human primate model of NAION in the retinal ganglion cells of the eye, where degeneration is common in older adults. We look forward to sharing more details on our progress as we continue advancing towards the clinic.”
ARDD: industry collaboration is key
From a wider industry perspective, McLaughlin stresses the important role that conferences like ARDD play in fostering collaboration between the academic, pharmaceutical, and biotech communities.
“Meetings such as ARDD provide excellent forums for the life sciences community to congregate and share learnings with one another,” he says. “At the end of the day, our collective mission is to discover, develop, and deliver potentially transformative medicines to patients who need them most. At Life Bio, we very much appreciate the opportunities that meetings such as ARDD provide to present research and move the needle forward on behalf of the different patient communities we aim to serve.”
As chair of the Longevity Medicine lectures at ARDD 2024, McLaughlin sees the interventions being discussed at the conference as being pivotal in shaping the future of clinical practice.
“The groundbreaking research shared here is driving the paradigm shift where aging is increasingly viewed as a modifiable process rather than an inevitable outcome,” he says. “These interventions, such as partial epigenetic reprogramming, which we are focused on at Life Bio, have the potential to extend healthspan by treating the biological mechanisms of aging – the important next step to bridging this gap.”
“At ARDD, by engaging with a community of like-minded researchers, scientists, and industry leaders who are all working towards a common goal, we can accelerate the transition into clinical practice and bring meaningful change to the patients who need it most.”
ARDD’s strategy of partnering with organizations such as XPRIZE and fostering The Youth Longevity Association is intended to help accelerate the translation of aging research into clinical solutions. An approach that McLaughlin wholeheartedly agrees with.
“The concept of extending “healthspan”,, is still emerging as new and exciting field of medicine, and among the ways to foster innovation in these areas is to align with like-minded individuals that share that passion for innovating,” he says. “Groups like XPRIZE and The Youth Longevity Association are committed to encouraging both rising talent and technologies that have the potential to shift the paradigm in how we approach drug development and patient care. The more support these fields receive through groups such as these, the more quickly we can advance solutions for patients facing age-related diseases while inspiring the next generation of innovators.”
