Age Later by Nir Barzilai M.D

Author:Nir Barzilai, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Searching for Promising Peptides

By the time we had received Mr. Liu’s first installment, CohBar had identified six peptides that had similarities to humanin. Hassy’s group named them SHLPs for small humanin-like peptides, and each of those peptides seemed to protect against at least one age-related disease. One of them was active against cancer, for example, some of them were active against Alzheimer’s, and many had overlapping effects. And in addition to protecting against Alzheimer’s, it appeared that SHLP-2 was similar to humanin in its action on metabolism. (We now know that SHLP-2 may also have protective effects against neurodegenerative diseases.) So all of a sudden, Hassy and CohBar were identifying all these other peptides that seemed to have real promise, but around the same time, the Supreme Court weighed in on the Myriad decision, which stated that naturally occurring molecules—such as genes and peptides—cannot be patented because they already exist in nature. So the way to commercialize peptides was to analog the SHLPs by making changes to them (or analoging them). This was also an opportunity to turn these peptides into drugs that are even more effective and longer lasting than the natural peptide. And by turning them into an analog, they can be patented as pharmaceuticals. We were on our way to achieving our dream to make a drug that could protect against aging itself and all the diseases associated with it!

And then the bottom fell out. A few months after we had received a total of $2.5 million from Mr. Liu, the Securities and Exchange Commission shut down his company. We learned that many Chinese business owners had started companies at the New York Stock Exchange and then taken the money back to China without following through on the business plans they had shown their investors. As it would turn out, Mr. Liu was one of the few who returned the investors’ money, and the SEC eventually cleared his record, but in the process, he lost many of his businesses, and he was unable to deliver the rest of the $10 million. We felt terrible about this outcome, so we promised him that when the company begins making a profit, he will receive the first $2.5 million before we take any profit for ourselves.

The setback was heartbreaking, but one of my best longtime friends came to our rescue. Jon Stern, the serial entrepreneur who invented the cup holders attached to seats in movie theaters and stadiums and whom we’d asked to serve as interim CEO of CohBar, introduced us in Albion Fitzgerald, who turned out to be our financial angel. With their guidance and financial support, we were quickly back in business. I had met Jon decades earlier because our parents became friends after his father had a stroke and was taken to the hospital where my father was chief of medicine. Meanwhile, Albion had made his fortune designing software and launching several technology companies, which he could have continued to do, but he decided to invest in biotech because he believed that would be more helpful to society.

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