As people age, their cells gradually become less effective at carrying out their daily functions and repairing damage. This micro-cellular decline can then lead to life-threatening macro-effects such as organ failure and disease. Traditionally, medicine focuses on treating the symptoms of this damage - such as cognitive decline or high cholesterol. However, ambitious biotechnology company BioViva is instead centering its attention on fixing the root cause of it all: cellular aging.
BioViva is implementing personalized, regenerative gene therapies to slow down and reverse biological aging. The firm has a patent on a gene delivery process known as adeno-associated virus (AAV). AAV, which uses the natural ability of a virus to deliver genetic material into cells, and therefore, can be used as a vehicle to carry therapeutic genes into human cells.
In addition to this, the biotechnology company has a patent pending on CMV, a gene delivery method with the capacity to support larger genetic loads due to its greater genome size and unique ability to incorporate multiple genes. CMV thus minimizes the number of treatments needed because more genetic information can be delivered at once. In initial animal studies, CMV treatment was seen to extend lifespan by over 41%. It has been proven to be a potent delivery vector and is being utilized as a part of multiple immunotherapies, including treatments for cancer, AIDS, and malaria.
Through this innovative form of gene therapy, BioViva is setting out to extend humans' health spans - which is the amount of time spent in good health - rather than focusing purely on improving lifespans. This is an issue that grows more critical as the global elderly population expands, particularly due to their increased susceptibility to COVID-19 and susceptibility to aging-associated diseases. Although life expectancy has increased by around three months per year in recent decades, UK data highlights that men are expected to spend around 16 years in ill health while women are expected to spend 19 years in poor health at the end of their lives. As a result, armed with its new gene therapy, BioViva is striving to narrow the gap between our health spans and our lifespans.
The older population's vulnerability is largely due to their immune system being in cellular senescence, where cells no longer divide and repair themselves; this comes as a result of the shortening of telomeres - which can be likened to shoelace-caps located at the ends of our DNA strands - that inevitably comes with biological aging. This damage is associated with diseases such as osteoporosis, heart disease, dementia, Alzheimer's, and cancers.
"Today, we are living longer than ever - which is great. But the caveat is that this means we are also in ill health longer than ever," says Liz Parrish, the CEO of BioViva. "Biological aging is the biggest killer on the planet. Not only does it impact the individual, but the effects of aging-related diseases ripple through to family members who have to see their loved ones struggle with these illnesses - illnesses that we believe will one day be preventable. This is what continues to inspire the entire team at BioViva to find solutions to aging-related decline and to reduce the detrimental impact of disease." Parrish has undergone gene therapy twice with positive results, underlining her conviction in the effectiveness of these treatments.
BioViva's gene therapy presents an opportunity to stop a disease in its tracks before it has been given a chance to spread; the company hopes this could offer cures to conditions that we now consider incurable. The company is now working with five gene candidates and expanding its gene candidates yearly.
As of my last knowledge update in October 2023, Bioviva's gene therapy products had not received FDA approval. Bioviva has been involved in various gene therapy projects, but specific approvals can change over time. For the most current information, it's best to check the FDA's official website or Bioviva's announcements.
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