An Interview with Stephanie Planque of Covalent Bioscience
Covalent Bioscience develops catalytic antibodies, a way to bind and neutralize target molecules in the body without consuming the antibody molecule itself. A given dose of catalytic antibody can thus remove many times more target molecules than is the case for standard monoclonal antibodies. This offers the potential for highly efficient removal of age-related amyloids present outside cells, perhaps the most interesting of the many possible use cases, such as those related to suppression of specific signal molecules. Like most biotech companies, the backstory behind the science emphasizes the point that progression of any given technology from academia to industry is slow indeed.
Covalent Bioscience was incorporated in 2010 by Dr Sudhir Paul and Dr Richard Massey based on catalytic antibody technology and several exciting potential products for unmet medical needs. The technology and potential products were developed in Dr. Sudhir Paul's group at the University of Texas (UT). Dr Richard Massey and Dr Sudhir Paul have worked together on the field of catalytic antibody (or catabody) when Dr Massey was in Igen in the late 80s. I have worked with Dr. Paul since 1999 and am one of the co-founders of Covalent Bioscience. We, the founders of Covalent Bioscience, share the same conviction that our platform technology holds the potential to generate superior immunotherapeutic drugs and vaccines.
Today, Covalent Bioscience has grown to a preclinical stage company holding significant assets. Our broad technology platform can be applied to generate novel lead products for unmet needs across multiple areas of medicine. We have three promising lead products for diseases that proved very difficult to treat and prevent by conventional means. Two of them are catabodies for treating age-associated diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and transthyretin amyloidosis. The products are expected to remove toxic aggregates that cause diseases in a more efficient and safe manner than conventional antibodies.
In 2018, Dr Paul and I moved full time to Covalent Bioscience. Our lab is located at the skirt of the Houston Medical Center, biggest medical center in the world. In 2020, Covalent Bioscience received from The University of Texas the commercial rights to all inventions and research materials/tools Paul's team generated there. With our current funding, we are generating new catabodies and working in collaboration with a pharma company to advance one of our lead products closer to human trials.
Link: https://medium.com/@arielf/interview-with-stephanie-planque-from-covalent-bioscience-9a2b49e74f49
Very interesting interview, altough quite technical.
OT: Did anyone watch "60 Minutes" last night? I'm stating that everything said or done on aging to present has been a long prelude to a short AI-composed symphony coming in the next year or two. The die has been cast, we will all either be dead in several years or aging will be well understood and treatable / reversible.
while interesting technically, I am not convinced antibodies are any better than good-old clonal predecessors. The same effort spent to bring it to the clinic make regular antibodies cheaper and more accessible.
@Thomas Schaefer
The AI-related forums label such hopes as "thinkism". Alas, biology is always surprising and the theories have to be constantly re-evaluated. For sure AI will enable many improvements , force many jobs to be redefined or make them obsolete. Anti-aging , however, is not an area which can be immediately tackled by AI even if it is super human.
@Cuberat , if you carefully read this interview, you have to know that catabodies do not involve immune reaction thus do not raise chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is possibly the reason that the conventional immunotherapies are failing in improving condition of patients.