Potential Partnerships in the Obesity Muscle Targeting Program

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Hanadie Yousef, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Juvena Therapeutics, and 2023 Pharmaceutical Executive Emerging Pharma Leader, discusses Juvena’s fusion protein JUV-161, which enhances muscle regeneration and metabolism by AKT signaling. JUV-161 targets myotonic dystrophy type one and other muscle-wasting diseases. Juvena is also developing JUV-112 for obesity, targeting adipose tissue without appetite suppression and muscle loss. She also addressed how their platform uses quantitative proteomics and artificial intelligence to identify and validate proteins for therapeutic use.

Pharmaceutical Executive: Your pipeline mentions "multiple confidential discussions" regarding the obesity (muscle target) program. Can you provide any insights into the nature of these discussions and how they might impact the development timeline or potential partnerships for this program?

Hanadie Yousef: Juvena is in multiple both confidential and non-confidential discussions with numerous pharma companies that are really excited about continuing to advance as leaders in the obesity space or getting into it with new assets. We are also in discussions with multiple folks and keeping them apprised of progress on our lead asset, JUV-161, but that's one in which we plan to continue to leverage venture capital to hit clinical translation and value creating inflections. We might consider partnering a bit down the line, but with some of our earlier assets that are in preclinical development, including our preclinical obesity asset, JUV-112, or some of our discovery programs around really leveraging our unique expertise in modulating muscle function and identifying candidates that can enhance muscle metabolism.

We're working internally to continue to develop these assets towards treating obesity or muscle wasting associated with incretin treatments and other types of obesity treatments. We are in contract negotiations and hoping to be able to close and potentially announce a partnership in the next few months. We're really excited about that. It would be leveraging Juvena’s platform and unique ability to mine stem cell secretomes and identify signaling proteins with therapeutic potential towards the field of obesity, to identify candidates that can really improve muscle metabolism, muscle health, and overall weight loss quality in combination with incretins or even as standalone agents.