Five Alarm Bio is kicking off a funding round to raise the necessary capital to demonstrate efficacy and pre-IND work for its portfolio of drug candidates that treat and prevent many of the chronic diseases of aging by harnessing the body’s own defences.
Initial targets include postoperative delirium (POD), Alzheimer's disease, wound care, Parkinson’s disease and sarcopenia. These underserved markets are expected to have a combined market value of over $50bn by 2030.
Founded in 2016, the Cambridge-based start-up is focused on discovering new approaches to slowing aging and increasing healthspan based on the science insights of founder William Bains into the basics of aging. The company has been carrying out focused seed experiments, first on a 'probe' molecule to test the proposed mechanism and then on analogues to identify usefully potent molecules. William got together with two other smart people to provide some initial capital and went into the lab himself for 21 months, before FAB brought experienced start-up CEO Janette Thomas to lead the company and raised its first funds to step up the research pace.
FAB first demonstrated that its approach could modulate aging by slowing cell senescence, a major target for companies working in age-related diseases. In the community $2.5bn has been invested targeting cell senescence, over half on the role of senescence in cancer. All are seeking drugs to kill senescent cells (termed senolytic drugs). FAB's approach is to boost a cell's ability to repair itself, an approach that is inherently safe.
Building on from that research has shown that its compounds act at a previously almost unknown central 'hub' in the cell's control of stress and damage responses, one with the potential to slow down the effects of aging across multiple cellular and physiological systems. Specifically, Five Alarm Bio has found that they:
- defer the onset of cell senescence in a physiologically relevant senescence model
- enhance the functional properties of older fibroblasts, keratinocytes and myoblasts
- enhance mitochondrial integrity in stressed cells
- Increase the active lifespan ('healthspan') of C.elegans
- help zebrafish recover from a model of CNS stress
- reduce the time taken to achieve wound closure
Cell migration in scratch test model of wound healing
Current experiments are testing the effect on genome integrity and epigenetics with aging - with read-outs expected on those experiments in a few months.
The 'probe' molecule has been extensively tested in humans and been shown to be extremely safe for long-term dosing, and initial results suggest that FAB’s new analogues are inherently safe as well. The company believes this is a realistic route to a drug that could be used to treat older people before they become seriously ill and disabled, to prevent them becoming ill and disabled. This is a radical departure from the conventional approach to medicine, which is to wait until people get ill and then try to keep them alive (aka “sickcare”). FAB’s long-term goal is a medicine that can get your body to defend against the daily onslaught of chemical damage that is a major cause of aging and chronic disease, and so extend healthspan for everyone.
Five Alarm Bio is based at the world-class Babraham Campus near Cambridge, where it has collaborations with several groups, as well as with the University of Bath and strong links to Swansea, Cardiff and Birmingham. To date the biotechnology company has been funded by its founders, seed fund and angel investors, and a major grant from Innovate UK. FAB is currently fundraising to raise £1.5M to consolidate its IP, deepen its biology, and conduct a major mouse longevity study to show that it can improve healthspan and lifespan in a mammal.
Founder and CSO William Bains told the Live Forever Club "This is such an exciting moment for us. I had the vision of a safe, simple-to-use medication to boost our body's ability to live healthily for longer, and we are closing in on just that. Every time we have tried our technology in a new model of aging over the last two years, it has worked. If this continues, the value of what we have found - medical, social, personal and financial - will be huge. I am really looking forward to meeting the visionaries who will support us on the next steps of our journey."
