BioViva’s core CMV gene therapy technology is the subject of a pending patent application. 

Among other things, this includes aspects of the fundamental recombinant viral vectors and treatment methods that have been shown to significantly increase longevity, prevent age-related hair loss, increase blood glucose tolerance, increase physical coordination, reduce age-related weight loss, and reverse signs of mitochondrial dysfunction.

As people age, their cells gradually become less effective at carrying out their daily functions and repairing damage. This micro-cellular decline can then lead to life-threatening macro-effects such as organ failure and disease. Traditionally, medicine focuses on treating the symptoms of this damage - such as cognitive decline or high cholesterol. However, ambitious biotechnology company BioViva is instead centering its attention on fixing the root cause of it all: cellular aging.

BioViva is implementing personalized, regenerative gene therapies in order to slow down and reverse biological aging. The firm has a patent on a gene delivery process known as adeno-associated virus (AAV). AAV, which uses the natural ability of a virus to deliver genetic material into cells, and therefore, can be used as a vehicle to carry therapeutic genes into human cells. In addition to this, the biotechnology company has a patent pending on CMV, a gene delivery method with the capacity to support larger genetic loads due to its greater genome size and unique ability to incorporate multiple genes. CMV thus minimizes the number of treatments needed because more genetic information can be delivered at once. In initial animal studies, CMV treatment was seen to extend lifespan by over 41%. It has been proven to be a potent delivery vector and is being utilized as a part of multiple immunotherapies, including treatments for cancer, AIDS, and malaria. Through this innovative form of gene therapy, BioViva is setting out to extend humans' health spans - which is the amount of time spent in good health - rather than focusing purely on improving lifespans. This is an issue that grows more critical as the global elderly population expands, particularly due to their increased susceptibility to COVID-19 and susceptibility to aging-associated diseases. Although life expectancy has increased by around three months per year in recent decades, UK data highlights that men are expected to spend around 16 years in ill-health while women are expected to spend 19 years in poor health at the end of their lives. As a result, armed with its new gene therapy, BioViva is striving to narrow the gap between our health spans and our lifespans.

The older population's vulnerability is largely due to their immune system being in cellular senescence, where cells no longer divide and repair themselves; this comes as a result of the shortening of telomeres - which can be likened to shoelace-caps located at the ends of our DNA strands - that inevitably comes with biological aging. This damage is associated with diseases such as osteoporosis, heart disease, dementia, Alzheimer's, and cancers. 

"Today, we are living longer than ever - which is great. But the caveat is that this means we are also in ill-health longer than ever," says Liz Parrish, the CEO of BioViva. "Biological aging is the biggest killer on the planet. Not only does it impact the individual, but the effects of aging-related diseases ripple through to family members that have to see their loved ones struggle with these illnesses - illnesses that we believe will one day be preventable. This is what continues to inspire the entire team at BioViva to find solutions to aging-related decline and to reduce the detrimental impact of disease." Parrish has undergone gene therapy twice with positive results, underlining her conviction in the effectiveness of these treatments. BioViva's gene therapy presents an opportunity to stop a disease in its tracks before it has been given a chance to spread; the company hopes this could offer cures to conditions that we now consider incurable. The company is now working with five gene candidates and expanding its gene candidates yearly.

BioViva is a US-based company committed to bolstering human longevity and reducing the effects of senescence through gene therapy.

Mission

BioViva USA Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on gene therapy to treat aging-associated diseases. The Company’s key assumption is that aging, defined as the time-dependent functional decline at the cellular level, is the single greatest risk factor for most human pathologies. However, it is treatable. The aging process, which sits at the intersection of biology, lifestyle, and various externalities, results in cellular degeneration characterized by telomere attrition, mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenetic changes, inter and extracellular changes, and genomic instability These interactions further cascade into metabolic dysfunction, cellular senescence, and stem cell exhaustion, leading to inflammation-driven conditions as well as other chronic disease states such as organ failure, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and dementia.

The Company

The Company focuses on advancing the state-of-the-art of this therapeutic approach to develop and license drugs; it has one patent granted and several pending in the AAV and CMV gene therapy spaces. Based on its most recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) earlier this year, the Company’s I.P. has decisively differentiated itself with a modified CMV vector. Find our paper here.(live link https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2121499119

The CMV delivery platform:  Solves the bottlenecks associated with gene therapy payload limits

Creates the potential for re-dosing

Uses a non-integrating capsid

Holds the potential for broader cell delivery

The Company approaches aging as a disease and, as such, is amenable to intervention. By doing so BioViva targets the underlying cause of most diseases in the developed world. Aging-associated decline constitutes the most significant unmet medical need on the planet and accounts for up to 63% of global deaths. These drugs represent an emblem of hope for patients currently deemed “untreatable.” Advances to date are significant, and with this launch velocity, the goal is to turn hope into reality.

BioViva believes the future of drug development lies in the hands of visionaries and investors. Aging is a problem worth solving, and BioViva believes the stakeholders will want these technologies. Changing demography ensures vast potential and equally vast demand. In the United States alone, “the slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by one year is worth US$38 trillion, and by ten years, 367 trillion dollars.”

The Company believes scalability will lead to accessibility. The Company will work to extend the quality of life of humans and mitigate the ravages of disease for the afflicted and the healthy alike. Initial targets include age-related disorders like dementia, frailty, and type 2 diabetes.

Emerging Viability of Gene Therapy and Vector Delivery

Gene therapy addresses disease at its most fundamental level - the genome. Gene therapy can precisely target the causes of dysfunction by directly inserting DNA, RNA, or mRNA into cells. The process is essentially the transference of exogenous protein codes associated with nucleic acids into cells to alter a disease state by correcting or supporting the host gene’s baseline functionality. This targeted insertion is designed to compensate for a missing systemic factor or impede the expression of a toxic one.
(See Diagram 1 below).

This approach has tremendous potential to cure many conditions by:

Replacing or missing genes

Deleting defective genes

Targeting and eradicating malignant cells

Upregulating a therapeutic protein or proteins

Mounting evidence validates gene therapy as a means of curing most monogenic diseases. Moreover, only a limited series of injections are required - typically one or two. As previously mentioned, this stands in sharp contrast to the endless treatments and impaired quality of life associated with many standards of care.

For now, monogenic disorders are viable targets because they are simple.

Gene therapy’s accruing credibility, based both on already approved therapies and those still under development, is structurally realigning the pharmaceutical industry. There are currently 990 gene therapy studies underway.