Genflow Biosciences PLC (LSE:GENF) said it has signed a research agreement with Magnitude Biosciences that will accelerate its future therapeutic developments and put it on track to carry out its research and pre-clinical drug discovery.
It said Magnitude provides an automated service using nematode worms to identify health-span extending drugs faster and more cost effectively than current approaches.
Genflow Biosciences is developing gene therapies designed to target the ageing process and to reduce and delay the incidence of age-related diseases, and Magnitude’s C. elegans worms provide in-vivo testing in aging research, to accelerate early, pre-clinical drug development for biotech and pharmaceutical firms.
Magnitude’s chief executive Dr David Weinkove has a particular interest in the field of ageing and was appointed as the new chair of the British Society for Research on Ageing earlier this year.
Magnitude’s technology enables it to monitor large numbers of C. elegans under multiple conditions and effectively assess the impact of compounds on health and longevity.
Its work on behalf of Genflow will begin with testing of the effect of the expression of human variants of the Sirtuin-6 (SIRT6) gene mutation found in centenarians on in-vivo function during ageing, by analysing C. elegans for age-dependent movement decline.
Genflow’s lead compound, GF-1002, a recombinant self-complementary AAV containing a transgene encoding the cDNA (coding DNA) portion of a variant of the human SIRT6 gene found in centenarians, has already yielded promising pre-clinical results.
Genflow chief executive Dr Eric Leire said: “We are very excited with this collaboration which gives us the opportunity to work with a company that has tremendous experience in longevity and has a uniquely skilled team.
“Through this collaboration, Genflow's future therapeutic developments will be accelerated by Magnitude's innovative technology which has the capacity to significantly expedite product development, supported by sophisticated machine monitoring."