Weight Loss Without Loss of Muscle Strength & Function

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 that enhances muscle regeneration and metabolism by AKT signaling. JUV-161 targets myotonic dystrophy type 1 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: JUV-112 targets adipose tissue for obesity. How does Juvena plan to differentiate JUV-112 from other obesity therapeutics targeting adipose tissue, particularly in terms of efficacy and safety profiles?

Hanadie Yousef: Juvena’s platform enables us to map proteins to multiple tissues and organs in which they're having tissue restorative effects and benefits. One of the tissues that we have been interested in dating back to 2021, as we began expanding the platform to therapeutic areas and tissues outside of muscle was fat, because muscle, fat, bone, and the immune system are very closely intertwined and collectively communicate to form our metabolism and promote metabolic health.

We were able to uniquely leverage our platform and technologies to screen and identify a very novel secreted protein that acts directly on fat to enhance lipolysis through an energy expenditure mechanism that's non-appetite suppressing, unlike the incretin. In our testing, the mice didn’t eat less, and excitingly it's also muscle sparing. Meaning it's causing weight loss while the animals are still eating just as much, but they're not losing muscle function or muscle strength, unlike what's happening with the incretin treatments.

We're really excited about this asset. It's currently in lead optimization and pre-clinical development. We're trying to tease out this mechanism of action, and as we do so, are talking to multiple interested parties with the hopes of getting into a partnership, as we continue to develop this program, to really accelerate towards one of the major unmet needs and obesity. Which are folks who might not want to take the incretins, for example. There's a large population (people with GI issues, women who might be pregnant or lactating, or folks that are even suffering from depression) that simply can't, given that the incretins, not in all cases, but occasionally have been shown over time to kind of exacerbate some of these symptoms.

There's just a lot of room out there, and there are people hungry for alternatives, for things that don't cause you to stop enjoying food and some of the finer things in life, for treatments that are inducing weight loss, but you don't need as much weight loss. Folks that have gotten the weight loss from incretins may just want to a maintain their progress. They're tired of the side effects. They don't want to go back on it, or suffer some of the muscle side effects. This could be an alternative. There’s a ton of room in the market for solutions that really mitigate or even accentuate the opportunities around what the encryptions are offering people. That's where JUV-112 comes in.