An Interview with the Bioquark CEO

My attention was recently drawn to Bioquark, where the principals are clearly interested in tackling regeneration and aging. The founders and scientific staff originate from the clinical stem cell medicine and medical tourism end of the spectrum, and appear to be approaching their goals via a programmed aging framework, the view of aging as a genetic program that can in principle be reversed by providing suitable signals to cells and the cellular environment. This stands in opposition to the more mainstream view of aging as an accumulation of cell and tissue damage, as expressed in the SENS rejuvenation research view, for example, but also by most researchers, even those who disagree with SENS. The various SENS damage repair companies, such as those working on senescent cell clearance, represent efforts to step beyond the present medical paradigm of merely patching over symptoms of aging, to produce large effects by repairing the damage that causes aging, taking the view of aging as damage to its logical conclusion. Bioquark might be seen an an analogous attempted leap forward for the programmed aging view, taking the very same critique of the present medical paradigm, and seeking large gains by adjusting the cellular environment to incorporate a more regenerative, youthful set of signals - taking the programmed view of aging to its logical conclusion.

To be clear, personally I'm solidly in the aging as damage camp, and I think that efforts like Bioquark are doomed to, at best, produce marginal success since their high level strategy is based on an incorrect view of aging. In particular, I think that any view that sees reversal of aging via cell signaling alone as a possibility for humans is badly misguided: it ignores, for example, the evidence for forms of harmful metabolic waste such as persistent cross-links that our biology cannot clear through its normal operation, even when youthful. The folk at Bioquark might nonetheless turn out to have found a decent path towards recapturing some of the known effects of stem cell transplantation via the use of cell signal molecules only; we shall see. Either way, the sooner we get to the point at which rejuvenation through damage repair after the SENS model is conclusively demonstrated to work well, and rejuvenation by adjusting cell behavior after the programmed aging model is conclusively demonstrated to work poorly, the better off we all are. The present medical paradigm of patching over symptoms without addressing causes should be cast into the waste basket of history. High profile failure has an important and necessary role to play in the near future of medical research, now that things are moving rapidly and biotechnology is cheap. Proving specific theories of aging right and wrong by building interventions that either work or do not work is an important activity.

One of the reasons I found the high level philosophy of action at Bioquark to be interesting is that it is one of the first new companies I've seen to start down the path of explicitly rejecting the cell therapy and transplantation side of regenerative medicine in favor of aiming towards in situ regeneration. It is my view that stem cell therapies in the current model, as well as a fair amount of tissue engineering for transplantation, will be replaced at some point in time by sophisticated ways to reprogram and direct existing patient cells in situ. It is an exercise in futurism and speculative economics to predict just how this will pan out over the decades ahead, but there is a fair amount of preliminary work along those lines taking place in the laboratory even now. Will we see 50 years of increasingly effective tissue engineering and transplantation, coupled to ever-better cell therapies and cell source production lines, or will those fields fade by the early 2030s in the face of surprisingly effective ways to make existing patient cells perform extensive regrowth and healing? Very hard to say at this point.

Who wants to live forever?

So, what's novel about Bioquark?

Bioquark is an innovative life sciences company focused on the development of novel products focused on complex organ regeneration, disease reversion, and age reversal in humans. Today, if a person loses their leg, it's forever. However, some animals can replace lost or damaged organs and tissues. Many of the species that can do this regrowth trick also have the ability to repair and reverse disease-causing cellular and genetic damage. We focused on the three "Rs": regeneration, reversion, and rejuvenation. What we ultimately discovered was that these were connected by an underlying capability in such organisms to turn back biological time in targeted tissues, and start the development process over again. In essence, we found that disease, degeneration, and aging were all intimately connected by this single underlying biological regulation process. This realisation led us to develop an integrated platform, which could eventually help humans to reawaken and mimic these abilities for purposes of health, wellness and longevity. This is a platform which the company believes can change the paradigm, and the way we think about healthcare and disease.

How does this area of regenerative medicine compare to what currently goes on in the pharmaceutical industry in regard to traditional drug development?

This is a very different approach. The current model is based primarily on treating disease, while regenerative medicine offers the promise of actual cures for these ailments. For the last century, the pharmaceutical industry has attempted to reduce and study human health and disease at the level of their most basic components - proteins, genes, cells, etc. They're continually looking for new drug targets, so that they can interfere in some fashion with specific biological processes. This approach has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to grow in size to around $1 trillion in annual sales. However, with exceptions such as antibiotics, we still have very few real cures for disease. Most drugs are developed without regard for, or knowledge of, any of the biological factors that precede these abnormalities. In short, the current healthcare model usually ignores the actual causes of disease. Additionally, this reductionist approach used to identify therapeutic targets continues to ignore the fact disease is not usually a result of an abnormality in a single gene product. Instead, it is an emergent state - involving multiple biological processes that interact in complex ways. Regenerative medicine offers to completely change the status quo, by finally allowing us to alter the underlying causes of disease. This gives us the hope of developing actual cures.

How does aging and longevity relate to regeneration?

Aging and longevity, like all of the chronic diseases mentioned above, are purely a function of your cell's regulatory states. If that regulatory state can be altered from point B back to point A, a human can technically become biologically younger. Some animals can do this already. This is how several species of jellyfish accomplish real time, whole body "age reversal". This is the ultimate path humans will follow, in order to achieve the same results.

How widely accepted are the claims you're making?

Actually, quite widely. The concept of using combinations of biologic materials derived from eggs (ooplasms) for age reversal has its beginning in the original cloning experiments of the 1950s. The study of regenerative biology, and dynamics such as tumour reversion, began prior to that - in the 1940s. Hence, we are just revisiting and recombining an old body of knowledge for a new and beneficial purpose.

Bioquark: Therapeutic Programs

Our lead candidate BQ-A, directly alters the regulatory state of diseased, damaged, or aged tissues, creating micro-environments that provide for both efficient regeneration and repair. BQ-A is a novel combinatorial biologic that mimics the regulatory biochemistry of the living human egg (oocyte) immediately following fertilization. During this period, oocytes perform an unparalleled set of tasks including: resetting cell age, reprogramming DNA to eliminate genetic and epigenetic damage, remodeling of organelles, and protection of the embryo from inflammatory, oxidative, and infectious damage. All of this is done in synergy to initiate the embryo's developmental genetic program, and start it on its complex, stepwise path through organogenesis and morphogenesis. In developing BQ-A, Bioquark has found a novel way to standardize this unique combinatorial biochemistry, in the form of a biologic, and apply it for the induction of tissue specific micro-environments that lead to effective regeneration and repair.

BQ-A has been tested in animal models and has been administered by several methods including subcutaneously, intraperitoneally, intratumorally, and topically. These studies have served to highlight broad potential across a range of tissues and administration methods, as well as to validate the universal nature of its tissue remodeling concept. ... Conducted chronic administration in both mice and fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) - Experimental mice lived 1.7 times longer than animals in control group and experimental Drosophila melanogaster flies lived 2.2 times longer than control group.

It is true that early human embryonic development involves a lot of very interesting processes. Rejuvenation of cellular features of aging certainly happens at that stage - babies are, after all, born young. It is one of their defining characteristics. The big question is the degree to which that sort of process is in any way safe to deploy in adult tissues, or how to make it safe, or at least to explore it further with these questions in mind. So it is good that some people are thinking along those lines and feel themselves sufficiently far along to be launching a company.

That said, the scientific materials they provide fail to cover and support all of their claims. To pick on one thing that jumped out at me, the figures given for life span effects only make sense if they are using accelerated aging models, for example. Those numbers would be big news if true in normal mice, since that is around the record for mouse life extension, achieved through forms of growth hormone signaling suppression. A doubled lifespan is still pretty unusual and interesting in flies, as few interventions achieve that in normally aging individuals. But in accelerated aging models, this size of effect can be entirely expected if using a therapy that in some way rescues the biological damage in the model that produces pathology and a shorter life span - and that may or may not have anything useful to say about aging and longevity in normal individuals. It depends strongly on the details. Unfortunately, the available materials don't clarify these life span claims. So on the whole I'd be inclined to wait and see on this company; the people seem legitimate, but I'd want to see trials and peer reviewed studies beyond the couple they have on their site to cover the various claims they are making.

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