George Church: His take on COVID-19 and fast-tracking age reversal therapies

George Church’s focus of late has been creating a regenerative medicine for age-related diseases. He is heads up on a new tool for gene therapy and cofounded Rejuvenate Bio in order to create “full age reversal’ gene therapies.”

Dr. Church has contributed to many advances in the world of genomic science, however he doesn’t feel that these milestones did much to advance the aging field.

Leading researchers in the field of aging have found that there’s still much to do on the research side, but this technological improvement has made advances in aging more accessible.

Thanks to the recent technological advances, it is now possible to map a human genome. It can cost as little as $300 and thanks to new companies, they are now mapping diploid genomes too.

Gene therapy drugs can now be more affordable for everyone. With the new paradigm of gene therapy, the price of drugs is a lot more reasonable. Gene therapy is cheaper to develop and people believe that these drugs are working much better than anti-aging medication like Zynteglo. Church days, “Those expensive gene therapies are for rare diseases, and their pricing reflects of the ratio of R&D costs to number of patients, but aging and its associated diseases affect nearly everyone. When you consider the volume of people that will be able to benefit from an age-reversing therapy, combined with the potentially huge benefits to society that such a treatment would enable, then it is a win-win for governments, healthcare providers and developers alike.”

Gene therapies are likely to take around 10 years to get approved. However, COVID-19 pandemic responses demonstrated how quickly the world can act in response to an emergency immunization protocol. Church also points out that the cost of the vaccines was not too high for healthcare systems as it was only around $2-$20 per dose.

There are plenty of people who are in worse health as a result of aging, and there should be ways to combat aging just as quickly as it is an extenuating circumstance.

Church claims that gene therapy is likely to be more effective than small molecule interventions. With targets being so specific, it’s possible that these drugs may not need frequent doses, and if that is the case, then it would be expected for them to have better results.

Church states that the gene therapy he has been developing for years can be used to treat both type II diabetes and heart failure.

Rejuvenate Bio is involved in research and development of a gene therapy that would benefit dogs with Mitral Valve Disease (MVD).

“Our animal health pipeline also gives us a unique advantage in that the results directly inform the direction of our work in our human therapies, and I believe this will allow us to deliver results faster.”

The company’s lead therapy is targeting two genes, FGF21 and sTGFβR2. Clinical trials are expected to begin next year.

Church is excited about the recent uptick in investment and the growing interest in the longevity field.

The advancement of AI in image recognition drives the field forward, validating a lot of work that has been done by academics. The scientist says it is important to attract younger, talented scientists, because that way progress can be achieved.