BIG PHARMA AND ANTI-AGEING

The field of anti-ageing is still young and is mostly a purview of innovative startups rather than traditional pharma. But nonetheless, pharma firms haven’t totally abandoned the space.

Leading among them is Swiss firm Novartis, which is conducting human trials for rapamycin for anti-ageing benefit.

In 2017, Novartis sold its two clinical-stage programmes for ageing-related disorders to

PureTech Health. PureTech has a subsidiary, resTORbio, to develop two of Novartis’s Phase IIstage mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1)-targeting drugs as potential therapies for holding back age-related deterioration in immune functioning. Novartis still has a 15 per cent stake into those candidates. In 2018, resTORbio announced its $50 million IPO. In 2020, the firm completed its merger with US’ Adicet Bio, Inc., a biotechnology company discovering and developing allogeneic gamma delta T cell therapies for cancer and other diseases.

US’ Celgene’s spin out Cellular Therapeutics develops anti-aging therapeutics derived from placental stem cells.

In 2020, US’ Johnson & Johnson (J&J) entered Longevity market with “Immorbidity” play. In partnership with US’ National Academy of Medicine, the new competition aims to find the next great breakthrough to help us stay active and healthy beyond the age of 100. The grand prize winners will be named in 2023 and given as much as $5 million to turn their ideas into reality.

Google backed anti-ageing startup Calico is in a long-running research collaboration with global biopharma US’ AbbVie for discovering novel therapies for age-related disease.