Alpha Young

Founded in 2019, Alpha-Young is developing life-saving drug therapies to combat Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). "If I could put time in a bottle..." - Jim Croce That's exactly our intention, to improve health-span for patients with end-stage kidney disease on dialysis (the current standard of care) while they await kidney transplantation. Ultimately, CKD affects much more than the kidneys. When our kidneys don’t function properly, they are unable to filter waste and toxins. They also are unable to provide vital nutrients, vitamins and hormones. These hallmarks of kidney failure damage other key organs and lead to further complications and life-threatening diseases, with the predominant co-morbidity being cardiovascular disease. CKD patients experience these effects in subtle and not so subtle ways, severely impairing their quality of life. Our Klotho-focused strategy aims to seamlessly integrate into CKD dialysis treatment to promote improved health-span. Klotho is a protein secreted in the Kidney that has shown to increase life-span in mouse models (Kurosu H et al, Science 2005). It does so by protecting organs and organ function that decline with age. Klotho further serves to regulate hormone levels and other biochemical signaling between organs. Klotho is a secreted protein that is too large in its native form to be used as a therapeutic. We are working to identify functional parts of the protein that may be modified to improve the protein's use as a therapeutic. We have had some early success in identifying peptide sequences, that when modified, improve Klotho as a potential therapeutic. Furthermore, we have discovered a new way to produce this modified Klotho at scale, a critical milestone in therapeutic development.