Unity Biotechnology Starts First Human Trial of a Senolytic Therapy

The honor of running the first trial of a senolytic drug, albeit inadvertently, goes to one of the groups testing dasatinib or navitoclax back when those pharmaceuticals were first evaluated for cancer therapies. At that time nobody knew that these drugs could selectively destroy senescent cells, and were thereby far more valuable as a starting point for rejuvenation therapies than as cancer treatments. The first intentional human trial was started last year by Betterhumans, a non-profit organization. Now Unity Biotechnology has recently announced that their first human trial is underway, testing the ability of their initial candidate senolytic to treat osteoarthritis. You may recall that the evidence in animal models for the accumulation of senescent cells to be a primary cause of osteoarthritis is fairly compelling. We can hope that this holds up in humans; results will likely start to appear in a preliminary form next year. UNITY Biotechnology, Inc., a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to extend healthspan by slowing, halting, or reversing diseases of aging, today announced the treatment of the first patient in the Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating UBX0101 in moderate to severe osteoarthritis of the knee. "For many people, we believe that osteoarthritis is the main reason why it hurts to get old. By designing a treatment to selectively eliminate senescent cells in the joints of patients diagnosed with painful osteoarthritis, our goal is to alter the ot...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs