The single drugs have ‘sponsored’ in the title when choosing them, at least.
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I think once it is sponsored it’s been claimed. Only one sponsor per protocol.
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Not sure if they do the same with multiple drug combinations though…
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I am talking them about doing a mixed citrate test. It seems to have gone a bit quiet though.
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I sponsored Circumin. I’m about to publish a podcast with Ora Biomedical’s CEO, Mitch Lee (PhD) about the worm bots and this new program. We also get into how to think about using and combining chemical interventions (if you dare).
Hint: avoid targeting the same aging hallmark or mechanism too much (e.g., Rapamycin plus several other hits to mTOR = red zone).
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Curcumin is a good thing to sponsor. It is a Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor (HDACi). It does other things as well. I am currently testing about 15 HDACi s. My theory is that they have a synergistic effect whilst each one has minimal side effects because the quantity of any one HDACi is relatively low.
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@John_Hemming Thats great to hear. What are your thoughts about spreading our small molecule interventions around multiple “hallmarks”? …to get a larger overall benefit without getting excessive (maybe harmful) effects on any one mechanism?
Curcumin failed the ITP.
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I think the Hallmarks are generally symptoms rather than mechanisms. (apart from mitochondrial inefficiency which I think is a cause/mechanism).
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Here is a podcast I did earlier this month with Mitch Lee, CEO of Ora Biomedical on their sponsorship program and his thoughts on how people like us can think about being bold AND safe in our pursuit of extended healthspan.
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@John_Hemming What are the root causes of the Hallmark Symptoms of Aging, in your opinion? “Mitochondial inefficiency”, “it’s the long genes that quit working”…gene expression (you’ve said this, as I recall.). What else?
The Hallmarks are symptoms. I think the reason they happen is that cells don’t produce the right proteins. There are two main reasons/pathways for that.
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It seems that Peter Diamandis would be a good fit as a funder for Ora Biomedical. Can anyone bring this to his attention?
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I’m watching a talk from ARDD 2023 John Speakman at ARDD2023: Stepping stones towards anti-ageing drug discovery
He talks about the worm bot & says that while things that work in mice (& humans) generally work in worms, the converse isn’t true. Things that work in worms have a low chance of working in mice. I still hope there is enough cross over to make the faster results from worms worth the effort.
His talk is about testing faster in mice by finding biomarkers that show up early in the mouse lifespan, which would also be useful if possible.
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I think the idea with wormbot is to create a first pass filter. If it’s true that things that work in humans also work in worms, but the reverse is only sometimes true… then testing 1,000,000 molecules in worms will reveal some number of molecules that work in worms and very likely some smaller percentage of those will work in humans.
But the advantage of the worms is the speed at which you can test massive numbers of molecules. It gives you have a pipeline. Test 1 million in worms → test the 1000 that pass in mice → then test the 100 that pass in humans. (I’m making up the exact numbers)
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I’m passing for now. They aren’t able to do deuterated PUFAs, heavy isotopes, or any of the “interesting molecules”
I had a go with citrate, but it serms to have got stuck.
I wanted to sponsor oral semaglutide (rybelsus), selegiline (deprenyl) and sotagliflozin (alone or in combination with other compounds like rapa or taurine) but they’re all absent from their list. I told them weeks ago, to no avail…
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I’m passing for now as well.
As much as I applaud their efforts. I just don’t their lack of transparency as concerns the publishing of data. Maybe that will change.
“just from a small pilot screen of a few mTOR inhibitors, Ora has already identified one that works better than rapamycin.”
But they haven’t said what it is !
We will probably never know, just like we never found out which compounds were synergistic with metformin.
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To be fair to them, however, if they are testing even thousands of combinations then that will take quite a bit of organising.
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