UNITY Biotechnology

biotech | February 22, 2017

For some time I've been tracking work on extending healthy lives and longevity, both from a scientific as well as an investment perspective. I indicated that there are a number of young biotech companies that start out seeking to extend lifespan, but as a survival mechanism, end up choosing a disease that is more common with age and seek to address that....

INDUSTRIAL IMPACT

UNITY | December 21, 2021

UNITY Biotechnology, Inc. a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to slow, halt, or reverse diseases of aging, announced it has signed an exclusive agreement licensing its α-Klotho asset to Jocasta Neuroscience, Inc. for development and commercialization. The α-Klotho protein is a circulating factor associated with improved cognitive performance in preclinical studies. α-Klotho is hypothesized to optimize synaptic neurotransmission of N-methyl-D-aspartate...

Drug Target Review | January 15, 2020

Scientists have created the first lab-dish models of the cellular clock, where each ‘tick’ stimulates the formation of the vertebra, which uses stem cells derived from adult human tissue. Over 20 years ago, Olivier Pourquié’s lab at Harvard University, US discovered a cellular clock in chicken embryos where each ‘tick’ stimulates the formation of a structure called a somite that ultimately becomes a vertebra. Now, Pourquié has led one of two teams to c...

Labiotech | January 15, 2020

The US company bluebird bio has launched the first gene therapy for the blood disorder transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia in the EU, with a hospital in Germany becoming its first qualified treatment center. Bluebird bio’s gene therapy, branded as Zynteglo, was given conditional market approval by the EU in June 2019. It was the first gene therapy approved to treat people over 12 years of age with all but the most severe form of transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia, a condition that n...