Anti-aging startup Unity dives into eye diseases as partnership with Ascentage bears fruit
After more than two years of hunting for treasure in Ascentage’s library of cell death regulating compounds, Unity Biotechnology thinks it has found a winner to guide its foray into age-related eye diseases.
Unity, which went public with a slate of mouse data backing its anti-aging pipeline last year, plans to file an IND for UBX1967 in the second half of 2019.
The drug inhibits particular members of the Bcl-2 family of proteins, known to play a regulatory role in apoptosis, or cell death. While Ascentage’s in-house work on this technology has focused on its cancer applications, it also fits well with Unity’s approach to selectively eliminate senescent cells — by targeting proteins they rely on for survival.
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