An Update on Revel Pharmaceuticals, Working on Glucosepane Cross Link Breakers

Revel Pharmaceuticals is the result of work funded in large part by the SENS Research Foundation, with the support of its many philanthropic donors. That part of the history of the underlying research isn't covered in today's short article on the company, so it seems worth mentioning here. Cross-links are chemical bonds formed between molecules in the extracellular matrix. Some are necessary to structure and function, but other unwanted cross-links are added over the years, creating stiffness in flexible tissues such as blood vessel walls and skin. In the case of blood vessels, stiffness causes hypertension, and eventual mortality. Revel is aiming to remove cross-links based on glucosepane, which appear to be the dominant type of persistent pathological cross-linking in human tissues. The field of glucosepane cross-link research is an excellent example of the way in which philanthropy is required to make progress. There was compelling evidence that such cross-links are likely important in the aging process, and yet next to no-one chose to work on the problem. This was a bootstrapping problem: because no-one had spent a good deal of time on glucosepane, the tools to work with it didn't exist. Worse, glucosepane isn't a factor in short-lived mammals, their important pathological cross-links are chemically different from those in humans, so animal models of such cross-linking were a distant prospect at best. Thus scientists, funding sources, and others all turned their a...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Longevity Industry Source Type: blogs