Fertility
Nisi Ovaria: Ovarian Longevity Acceleration with AthenaDAO and GERO
Summary
Gero - a biotech company using AI for target and drug discovery - in a partnership with AthenaDAO, will use their platform, anticipating the identification of up to 10 novel targets for ovarian aging. Drug development would occur collaboratively with Gero.
Preliminary analysis identified genetic loci potentially associated with ovarian aging independent of systemic aging. These targets hold promise for delaying menopause and reducing its health-related consequences. This builds on Gero’s previous work using this platform approach to identify drivers of aging from the UK Biobank. AthenaDAO in collaboration with Gero aims to revolutionize the treatment landscape for ovarian aging, providing therapeutic potential in a currently limited area.
Problem
Ovarian aging progresses independently of systemic aging, yet has a significant impact on the quality of life in women. Early menopause has been tied to an increased risk of age-related diseases, reduced productive working years, and an increase in disability-adjusted life years (Darba et al., 2015; Elligrud et al., 2024). Despite widespread impacts, limited therapeutic options in this area currently exist for women.
Women will spend on average 1/3 of their lives post-menopausal, and though life expectancy is higher for them, the quality of life (QoL) index is lower due to increased health problems. (Closing the Women’s Health Gap: A $1 Trillion Opportunity to Improve Lives and Economies).
There is only ONE intervention at the moment for menopause—which only treats symptoms—Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). To date, only 4% of women in the USA are on this treatment.
Even though women make up half of the world’s population, and the menopause market has been estimated to be 600 billion dollars in the US alone, it is a widely untapped market with women looking for more options, but there are no pharmacological solutions.
Solution
Gero is a Series A platform biotech company creating therapeutics against chronic diseases with a mission to slow down human aging, based in Singapore. They have collaborations with leading institutions like Harvard Medical School, NYU, and the Roswell Park Cancer Center, as well as a strategic partnership with Pfizer to develop treatments for fibrotic diseases.
Gero is leveraging a cutting-edge machine learning platform to re-analyze data from an ovarian aging Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) from the Estonian and UK Biobanks. Preliminary analysis by Gero found genetic loci associated with ovarian aging independent of systemic aging. These targets hold promise for delaying menopause and reducing its health-related consequences. This builds on Gero’s previous work using this platform approach to identify drivers of aging from the UK Biobank. AthenaDAO in collaboration with Gero aims to revolutionize the treatment landscape for ovarian aging, providing therapeutic potential in a currently limited area.
Success will be measured through the identification of novel targets for Ovarian Aging (estimated up to 20 new targets), leading to:
- Clinical trials using repurposed drugs
- Development of novel therapeutics of undefined modalities
The GERO team consists of:
- Peter Fedichev, PhD: Co-Founder and CEO of Gero. He has over 20 years of experience in research and biotech. His training is in condensed matter physics, biophysics, and bioinformatics.
- Maxim Kholin: Co-Founder of Gero. He brings 20 years of experience, leveraging his experience from his previous start-up, Quantum Pharmaceuticals, which IPO’d in 2014, to help bring drugs to market.
- Alex Kadet: Chief Business Officer at Gero. He has spent 12 years helping grow biotechnology companies. He leads strategic partnerships and collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations.
In addition to these accomplishments, with the planned funding we will have a list of novel targets and preclinical program plans for in vivo models to attract further investments and facilitate drug development. Additionally, we will develop free and important tools for the ovarian aging community such as the MRS and MRM models.
Commercialization potential
Gero is a platform biotech company creating therapeutics against chronic diseases with a mission to slow down human aging, based in Singapore. They have collaborations with the researchers from the leading institutions like Harvard Medical School, NYU, and the Roswell Park Cancer Center, as well as a partnership with Pfizer to develop treatments for fibrotic diseases.
Gero is leveraging a cutting-edge machine learning platform to analyze data from UK Biobank and produce an ovarian aging Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS). Preliminary analysis identified genetic loci potentially associated with ovarian aging independent of systemic aging. These targets hold promise for delaying menopause and reducing its health-related consequences. This builds on Gero’s previous work using this platform approach to identify drivers of aging from the UK Biobank. AthenaDAO in collaboration with Gero aims to revolutionize the treatment landscape for ovarian aging, providing therapeutic potential in a currently limited area.
Success will be measured through the identification of novel targets for Ovarian Aging (estimated up to 10 new targets), leading to:
- Clinical trials using repurposed drugs
- Development of novel therapeutics of undefined modalities
The GERO team consists of:
- Peter Fedichev, PhD: Co-Founder and CEO of Gero. He has over 20 years of experience in research and biotech. Peter has 100+ peer-reviewed publications in physics, aging biology, and drug design, including Science and Nature Communications.
- Maxim Kholin: Co-Founder of Gero. He brings 20 years of experience, leveraging his experience from his previous drug discovery start-up, Quantum Pharmaceuticals.
- Alex Kadet: Chief Business Officer at Gero. He has spent 7 years helping grow biotechnology companies. He leads strategic partnerships and collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations.
We are confident that with the planned funding we will have a list of novel targets for in vivo models to attract further funding and start further development. Additionally, we will have important tools developed for the ovarian aging community such as the MRS and MRM models.
Use of funding
| Item | Description | Duration and Cost ($USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Milestone 1: Produce Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) from UK Biobank data (3 months) | 1.1. Agree on the list of symptoms for MRS calculation in UKB. 1.2. Perform factor analysis in the space of symptoms, identify and discuss menopause rating scale (or scales) for downstream studies. 1.3 Collect all the relevant data in UK Biobank, train the reference model. | 1 month $60,000 |
| Milestone 2: Train reference model and menopause transition risk (MRM) models (3 months) | 2.1. Train and characterize the risk of menopause MRM using medical information in UK Biobank. 2.2. Identify the high-risk cohort of women in UK Biobank for downstream extreme phenotyping studies. | 2 months $100,000 |
| Milestone 3: Target Identification through GWAS and Rare Damaging Variants Association Studies (2 months) | 3.1. Perform GWAS of Age of Menopause Onset (AMO) (using the whole dataset and the high-risk cohort from MRM) and MRS. 3.2. Perform rare damaging variants association studies of AMO (both cohorts) and MRS. 3.3. Find plasma protein levels associated with AMO (post-assessment), MRM, and MRS. | 2 months $70,000 |
| Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) consultation and in vivo model planning | GWAS data analysis and consultation about quality of target list and potential in vivo animal models. Plan testing of the proposed targets and interventions. | 1 month $20,000 |
| Overhead | Administrative costs for project management, incidentals. | $15,000 |
| Legal | Contract execution and review for licensing and royalties. | $15,000 |
| Liquidity Pool | 5% of the funding amount will go toward project liquidity. | $14,000 |
| Total | 6 months $294,000 |