
A Biotech Entrepreneur Aims to Help Us Stay Young While Growing Old - aaavl2821
https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2018/06/05/how-a-biotech-entrepreneur-aims-to-make-aging-less-awful/#2d2c0f12c203
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reasonattlm
I think one of the bigger challenges facing Unity is that dasatinib plus
quercetin may be just as good as anything they are rolling out. All of the
animal studies of senolytic compounds fall into the category of either no
meaningful effect or the category of ~25% clearance in selected tissues.

Small molecule development, in the sense of changing the parameters of your
candidate in a desired direction in a class of molecules, is slow and
expensive and to a certain extent reliant on good fortune. You can't just
reliably and cheaply dial up the effectiveness or adjust with tissue
specificity.

In a world in which dasatinib/quercetin, which costs ~$100 for a dose you take
every year at most, does as well as the Unity candidates, will Unity be able
to charge the high costs at a great enough volume required to keep the
investors happy? Seems unlikely.

I think Oisin Biotechnologies turning up a year or two later in the clinic
with a far superior gene therapy product, clearing near all senescent cells in
near all tissues, and which can be adjusted rapidly and at low cost, is less
of a threat. The market, every human being much over the age of 40, is truly
enormous, and several large companies could operate without bumping into one
another all that much.

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aaavl2821
Is dasatinib + querceptin approved to treat any indications unity is studying
/ is their clinical data? If not then would be hard for them to compete with
an approved drug unless they have some really great clinical data. Also if
unity is less toxic that might be better than marginally better effectiveness
in the chronic indications they're pursuing

Not familiar with Oisin, what is their vector? Does it enable repeat dosing?

