StarkAge Therapeutics: a unique and relentless focus on senescence

Immunotherapy against senescence

StarkAge Therapeutics’ ambition is to delay or halt disease progression and improve the quality of life of patients with age-related diseases associated with the accumulation of senescent cells.

StarkAge Therapeutics: a unique and relentless focus on senescence

StarkAge Therapeutics (SATx) is a pioneering privately held discovery-stage biotechnology company based in Lille, France. It was founded in 2018 by Dr. Thierry Mathieu, with scientific support from Dr. Müge Ogrunc, based on the idea that eliminating disease specific senescent cells using immunotherapy could deliver significant therapeutic benefits to patients. Its ambition is to delay or halt disease progression and improve quality of life of patients with age-related diseases.

Mounting evidence in literature confirms senescent cell accumulation as a hallmark in various aged-related diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic dysfunction or hepatic fibroses. Recent reviews identified potential targets and set the foundations for testing applications in human.

The French government has granted StarkAge Therapeutics with the “Jeune Entreprise Innovante” label in recognition for our innovative research. In addition, bpifrance (the “Banque Publique d’Investissement”) has supported our research pipeline with an initial grant in 2019. In 2021 they granted the prestigious DeepTech label and significant additional non-dilutive financial support.

Research Overview

Each year almost 60M people die from non-contagious chronic illnesses, all of which are linked to aging (World Health Organization). Great progress has been made in recent decades in understanding the molecular mechanisms behind the causes of age-related pathologies, in particular cellular senescence. The persistent accumulation of senescent cells appears to be one of the contributors to aging.

StarkAge Therapeutics was the first team to develop an alternate method for the depletion of senescent cells in age-related pathologies using immunotherapy. We believe that selective senescent cell destruction is the key to achieving successful clinical outcomes which will result in a longer lifespan in good health.

StarkAge Therapeutics unique expertise originates from its proprietary biomarker discovery platform, ExoCiseTM, enabling the characterization of senescent cells biomarkers from patient derived extracellular vesicles and their specific validation for each disease.

Our Pipeline

The first pathology StarkAge Therapeutics will focus on is Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).

There is growing evidence in the scientific literature that clearly indicates the central role of senescent cells in the pathophysiology of this disease.

Our research program for the next few years will therefore focus on the discovery and validation of patient-derived senescence target markers linked to this pathology.