Hans Keirstead, PhD | Immunis, Inc.; Gabriel Nistor, MD; Nicole Berchtold, PhD; Scott Greilach, PhD; Thomas Lane, PhD, University of California, Irvine; Mich Drummond, PhD, University of Utah
Competition Sponsor: National Academy of Medicine
Awardee Year: 2025
The current medical approach to manage chronic conditions in aging is to treat individual manifestations of aging in isolation using single active ingredients, with little focus on prevention, and without addressing the underlying age-related biological changes that drive health dysfunction and increase the risk of chronic conditions. A treatment that could prevent or reverse the underlying age-related biological drift would improve health in aging, reduce risk of chronic conditions, reduce medical costs, and improve quality of life. We propose that such a therapeutic can be made from defined, high purity stem cell derivates, which can essentially be used as factories to produce defined cocktails of pro-regenerative biologics that have the capacity to restore health across diverse biological systems. Defined progenitors derived from stem cells secrete a broad range of bioactive factors that play crucial roles in maintaining tissue homeostasis, regeneration, and immune modulation, all biological functions that show impaired function in aging. These secreted molecules, collectively known as the secretome, include a broad range of growth factors, cytokines and chemokines (immune signaling molecules), tissue remodeling enzymes and other signaling molecules. The biologics in the secretome are key regulators of many biological functions that undergo age-related dysfunction including tissue regeneration and wound healing, inflammation and immune modulation, and maintenance of cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal health. Restoring health to these diverse biological systems would greatly improve quality of life in the aging population, thereby reducing the medical and financial burden.