A paper co-authored with Prof. Shohei Mitani’s group at Tokyo Women’s Medical University was published. The title is ” Regulation of aging by balancing mitochondrial function and antioxidant levels”.

The paper is on the prevention of aging with XOR inhibitors.

Yoshina S, Izuhara L, Kamatani N, Mitani S. Regulation of aging by balancing mitochondrial function and antioxidant levels. J Physiol Sci. 2022 Nov 15;72(1):28. doi: 10.1186/s12576-022-00853-1.

https://jps.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12576-022-00853-1

Content Overview.
Administration of febuxostat (FBX), an XOR inhibitor, to C. elegans showed that FBX protects mitochondria and prevents age-related muscle deterioration. Furthermore, the administration of FBX was shown to increase ATP levels and extend lifespan without overloading the mitochondria. Furthermore, we showed that the combination of FBX and antioxidants increased lifespan even more. The study showed that antioxidant effects and increased ATP levels may lead to anti-aging effects.

StaGen’s comment
Febuxostat administration lowers uric acid and may reduce antioxidant function, but the addition of inosine inhibits uric acid lowering. This paper suggests that an ATP-enhancing drug (a combination of febuxostat and inosine) under development by StaGen may have anti-aging applications.

The Cleveland Clinic and five other universities in the U.S. have published the results of a large-scale AI drug discovery method to select effective drugs for Alzheimer’s disease from all FDA-approved drugs.

Fang J et al. Artificial intelligence framework identifies candidate targets for drug repurposing in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2022 Alzheimers Res Ther. 2022 Jan 10;14(1):7. doi: 10.1186/s13195-021-00951-z.

As a result, three drugs were selected: pioglitazone, febuxostat, and atenolol. Clinical trials using pioglitazone have been conducted for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, but it has problems of patent expiration, hypoglycemia and bladder tumor.
We selected febuxostat by analyzing data from 2015, and patented a combination drug of febuxostat and inosine, which is now in clinical development at Takaha Pharma Co. Ltd. for the treatment of mitochondrial disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.
We had also considered the issue of patent expiration and patented a combination drug that is more effective and safer, and could be developed as a new drug.