Gene therapy screening to discover aging targets (Martin Borch Jensen - Gordian Biotechnology)
Gordian Biotechnology is a San Francisco Bay Area biotech company that has created the first in vivo therapeutic screening platform aimed at drug development for complex diseases of aging. Co-founder and Chief Science Officer, Dr. Martin Borch Jensen joins the show today to discuss Gordian’s unique in vivo pooled screening in animals, as well as which indications they are targeting, their strategy to bring drugs to market, and how Gordian is currently tackling the challenges inherent to animal models. Martin also speaks about his passion from an early age to help fight age-related disease, and making the transition from academia to entrepreneurship, giving up a K99 fellowship at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging to make the jump into biotech.
You’ll also hear about Martin’s involvement in multiple efforts to promote longevity science and bring new people into the field, including his apprenticeship program, the newly announced Longevity Impetus Grants program, and recording his “Science of Aging” seminar. Next, Martin shares what’s next for Gordian as they get ready to scale to the next level, which areas of longevity science he is most interested in but not currently working on, and how he predicts the field will evolve over the next five to ten years. For more information on Martin’s apprenticeship program and Impetus Grants application process, please visit MartinBorchJensen.com or follow him on Twitter.
Episode Highlights:
Quotes:
“It's phenotypic screening, but also because it's gene therapies we're putting in, we know the target immediately. So I call it ‘pheno-target screening,’ combining the best of both discovery modalities that are used.”
“At Gordian, we're focused on removing the diseases of aging. Right now we're doing that with three lead indications, and that number will grow, which are NASH and osteoarthritis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.”
“We've created the platform in order to be able to do somewhat unbiased screens or entirely unbiased screens, and just explore a lot more of the biology of these diseases than has ever been explored in vivo so far, because we have this higher throughput.”
“The logistics of the other method simply don't allow you to test a wide range of things in the in vivo context.”
“I'm very excited about gene therapy in the long run to treat aging, diseases of aging, and just the physiological processes of aging. Because it turns out that what a cell needs depends on what a cell is. And so you probably don't want the same treatment in every type of cell in your body.”
“You need a targeted way to go in and give each type of cell and each tissue what it needs, if we're going to really exercise control over the aging process.”
“Maybe animal models aren't so bad for many diseases, if you find an animal that has continuously developed, progressively, a disease in the same way that humans develop this disease, and has biology that resembles human biology and the relevant organ.”
“We are a drug development company. We've developed this in vivo full screening platform in order to use it ourselves and discover the best drugs for each of the indications that we go into.”
“We are in conversations with a whole bunch of pharma companies about partnering at the clinical stage around the assets that we are discovering with our platform.”
“As a teenager, I came to the realization that I wanted to try to fix aging… The idea that everyone is going to get sick and be in pain, and then die, just seemed really bad.”
“I wanted, with Gordian, not only to have the successful outcome of treating age-related diseases, but I also wanted to feel for myself that I was doing absolutely everything that I could towards the goal that I had decided.”
“It's going to be really hard. There's going to be doubts and challenges… And so if you're doing it for reasons that won't compel you to push through all of that, it's probably not going to work out.”
“[This apprenticeship program] is needed, because there are more things that should happen, and apparently could happen, than I could possibly ever go and do myself.”
“The apprentices end up doing most of the legwork by far. And I'm kind of steering it.”
“This is the real test of success for this apprenticeship - if the people in it end up running important projects within the longevity field overall, then it's a success.”
“If there is something there, if the project does work out, that would actually be a really big push forward for the field, then we should try to fund those things. And many of them won't work out and that's okay. We can learn from that.”
“Any nonprofit can apply from anywhere in the world. Or any researcher at a nonprofit.”
“What you really have to explain to us is, How is what you're doing going to move the field forward, if it works, and why is the way that you're doing it, a good, robust, well thought-out experimental plan for doing it? Those are the main things that we look for.”
“In five to 10 years, I think we will have drawn studies for biomarkers of human aging. So I think that in five to 10 years -hopefully more like five - we will have ways of measuring in humans, something that we choose to call aging.”
Links:
Email questions, comments and feedback to [email protected]
Translating Aging on Twitter: @bioagepodcast
BIOAGE Labs Website BIOAGELabs.com
BIOAGE Labs Twitter @bioagelabs
BIOAGE Labs LinkedIn
Martin Borch Jensen Website MartinBorchJensen.com
Martin Borch Jensen on Twitter: @MartinBJensen
Longevity Impetus Grants Website ImpetusGrants.org
Gordian Biotechnology Website Gordian.bio