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.
Image credit: Pixabay (Free Pixabay license)
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 attention to other projects in other fields, because those other projects promised a more rapid path to what the world at large considers useful outcomes. Next to no-one funded or worked in the field of glucosepane cross-linking precisely because next to no-one funded or worked in the field of glucosepane cross-linking research.
How was this problem resolved? The SENS Research Foundation, a non-profit, stepped in and used funds provided by donors to fund the work to produce the necessary tools for glucosepane cross-linking research, as well as projects that identified bacterial enzymes capable of breaking down glucosepane.
That work was licensed out to Revel Pharmaceuticals, and one of the researchers involved is now heading the company in an effort to turn those enzymes into therapies. The point here is that philanthropy works. This is one of any number of similar efforts to unblock research and development undertaken by the SENS Research Foundation and Methuselah Foundation over the past twenty years. The outcome will hopefully lead to a proof of concept to demonstrate that glucosepane cross-linking is an important aspect of aging, and that in turn will shortly thereafter become an industry with as much promise as the present senolytics industry when it comes to human rejuvenation.
Source: Fight Aging!