Dr. Marco Quarta, CEO and Co-founder of Rubedo Life Sciences, joins Chris on today’s episode to discuss his company’s strategy of targeting pathologic cells to develop therapeutics for chronic degenerative conditions. The conversation covers the evolving definition of senescence and the challenges of identifying and classifying pathologic cells, which vary across different tissues and indications. Marco also announces the upcoming Senotherapeutic Summit in November, which will bring together stakeholders from different fields to advance therapeutic research. 

Marco and Chris also review Rubedo Life Sciences' clinical development approach: targeting the aging process with the goal of helping healthy stem and immune cells to repair. They then go on to discuss the funding and work required for the selection and nomination of a lead candidate for a project, the importance of having access to primary clinical samples to test efficacy, and the subsequent steps of the grant awarding process. The conversation then turns to the value of having multiple programs running simultaneously. 

Tune in today to learn more about  the ‘sneaky’ process of senescence that accelerates aging, the toxicity of these rare cells and the development of small molecules that can target them, the complexities of developing new therapies, and the value of having a robust pipeline of programs to advance therapeutic R&D.

The Finer Details:

• Defining pathological cells and their role in chronic degenerative conditions
• Identifying, classifying, and targeting senescent cells
• The need for a focused effort in identifying specific targets for therapeutics
• The evolution of the definition of senescence and the existence of multiple types of senescent cells
• The Senotherapeutic Summit in November and its goal of advancing the field of therapeutics
• Running multiple programs simultaneously
• The upcoming event in Saudi Arabia aimed at accelerating and promoting healthy longevity.

Quotes:

"These are aberrant cells, dysfunctional cells, and maladaptive cells that are contributing to shift the microenvironment and leading to progression of chronic degenerative conditions, driving chronic inflammation, fibrosis, stem cell depletion, and cancer."

"There are no universal pathologic cells across all tissues or indications. So it really depends on your question and finding targets associated with those that you can really go after in a drug discovery pipeline to generate therapeutics." 

"We are hoping to push forward the conversation about what senescent cells are, how we can classify them, and how we can move forward with targeting these cells."

"We are testing back to back multiple indications including for example, chronic age related atopic dermatitis and others."

"And it's a very important event that we'll have major stakeholders from high level government officials and scientists and innovators business leaders and really the idea of promoting a healthy longevity and how can we accelerate this."

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