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Juvena Therapeutics, a California-based longevity biotech startup, has announced a major collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to develop next-generation therapies for conditions like frailty, obesity, and muscle loss. The partnership, potentially worth over $650 million, will combine Juvena’s AI-driven discovery platform, JuvNET, with Lilly’s development and commercialization capabilities. Juvena’s platform analyses proteins secreted by human stem cells to identify drug candidates that promote muscle regeneration, fat metabolism, and metabolic resilience.
Juvena’s co-founder and CEO, Dr. Hanadie Yousef, highlighted the pharmaceutical industry’s growing interest in therapies that preserve or enhance muscle health, especially as GLP-1 drugs for obesity have raised concerns about muscle loss during rapid weight reduction. Juvena’s drug discovery process focuses on secreted signalling proteins and uses quantitative proteomics, multi-omics, and high-content imaging to map how these proteins influence disease.
Juvena’s pipeline already includes JUV-161, a biologic therapy now in clinical trials that supports muscle regeneration, and JUV-112, which enhances fat metabolism and energy expenditure without affecting appetite or muscle mass—offering a potential exercise-mimicking effect.
Juvena co-founder Dr. Jeremy O’Connell emphasized the goal of the collaboration: to create therapies that go beyond weight loss by targeting underlying biological functions, improving mobility, metabolism, and long-term health. By combining Lilly’s expertise in metabolic disease with Juvena’s AI platform and biologic pipeline, the partnership could help redefine treatment standards for obesity and age-related muscle decline.
