Fighting Neurodegeneration with Tau Tangle Blocking: Oligomerix CEO James Moe Explains
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2020
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are still no disease-modifying therapeutics for dementia patients, but James Moe thinks that will change soon. This podcast discusses research on a particular drug that's showing promise, but also helps with understanding Alzheimer's disease progression.
On a hopeful note, James Moe emphasizes how close the neurodegeneration research community is to developing significant breakthroughs.
Listen and learn
- Why Oligomerix chose to focus on the tau protein when many other companies were working with amyloid,
- How their therapeutic prevents tau from misfolding and forming tangles that harm neurons, and
- Where they are in clinical studies and what the research community as a whole might offer.
Oligomerix, Inc. focuses on neurodegenerative diseases of the brain, such as the management of Alzheimer's disease. James Moe says that when they started the company, they decided to focus on the tau protein despite a contemporaneous emphasis on amyloid. Among other reasons, their thought was to focus upstream in the pathway by blocking the tau protein from binding to itself. Their research showed that neurodegeneration is connected to the neuron damage resulting from tangles the protein accumulations caused. This began their quest to develop self-association assays for tau.
Almost 6 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease symptoms and it poses a significant burden on health care costs of our country in addition to the pain of patients and families. But developing preventions of Alzheimer's dementia and effective treatment is no small task. However, because there's been so much investment by the medical community, James
Moe feels that the field is developing a "mass amount of knowledge . . . and is on the cusp for major therapeutics." Their own research has shown in vivo data where phosphorylation was diminished in three different regions throughout the molecule. This should prevent the misfolding that leads to neuron-damaging tangles. Listen in for more about the exciting potential of this therapeutic.
For more about the company, see their web site: oligomerix.com.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Forget frequently asked questions common sense common knowledge or Google how about advice from a real genius |
| 0:06.8 | 95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified and licensed 5% go and beyond. They become very good at what they do, but only 0.1% are real Jesus. |
| 0:18.3 | Richard Jacobs has made it his life's mission to find them for you. He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every |
| 0:24.7 | field, sleep science, cancer, stem cells, ketogenic diets and more. Here come the geniuses. |
| 0:30.1 | This is the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:33.0 | That is Richard Jacobs. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:41.0 | I have James Mo. He's the CEO of Olegomerics. It's O-L-I-G-O-M-E-R-I-X. |
| 0:48.0 | James, thanks for coming. |
| 0:50.0 | Well, thank you, Richard, for having me. |
| 0:52.0 | Yeah, tell me about the company. |
| 0:53.7 | What's the premise of it? |
| 0:54.8 | We are a company that's focused on neurodegeneration and neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's |
| 1:02.0 | being, for which there's no disease modifying therapeutic |
| 1:05.6 | interventions that are existing at this time. And when we started the company that that was the case. |
| 1:11.5 | And what we did was when we started was to focus on a |
| 1:16.4 | protein called tau protein even though the rest of the field was focused on |
| 1:20.0 | amyloid because we believe based on the literature that Tau was also a major player in disease. |
| 1:28.0 | So we positioned ourselves kind of on the other target which was somewhat differentiated us. |
| 1:35.0 | But others who were focused on the Tao target were focused more on the later stage fibrals, |
| 1:40.0 | but we decided that it might make more sense to move upstream to block town from binding to itself. |
| 1:48.0 | And so that began our quest for developing self association assays and ultimately that's what's led us to this point. |
... |
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