Removing Toxic Biomolecules that Accumulate with Age

Something I love about scientific conferences is being exposed to less widely known - but potentially very important - avenues of research. Case in point: the accumulation of a toxic biomolecule, an oxidized form of cholesterol (7-ketocholesterol : https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/7-Ketocholesterol ), believed to play a role in atherosclerosis as well as Alzheimer and other conditions.

Matthew O'Connor (of "Cyclarity Therapeutics", https://cyclaritytx.com , formerly "Underdog Pharmaceuticals" - a spin-out company from SENS Research Foundation) discusses the fascinating progress - and IMMINENT CLINICAL TRIALS - to use specially modified small molecules (cyclodextrins) to improve and even reverse the damage. One such compound, dubbed "UDP-003" is expected to enter phase I clinical trials in 2023.

The company is also planning to go after other toxic molecules - in particular, small hydrophobic molecules, such as A2E, associated with macular degeneration.

Given my own personal interest in Computational System Biology, I was also especially excited to hear about their "Candymer" software that can do in-silico estimations of binding affinity for some compounds.

(from the "Ending Age-Related Diseases 2022" conference ; the annotations in red on one of the images are from me )