Company aims to enhance drug discovery by observing the molecular changes that occur as people transition from health to disease over decades.
Longevity biotech BioAge Labs has announced that it will harness molecular data from the HUNT Biobank in Norway to expand the capabilities of its drug discovery platform. By analyzing biological samples gathered from more than 6,000 participants in the HUNT study, one of Europe’s largest and most extensively characterized population health cohorts, the company aims to generate millions of molecular readouts that will deepen its understanding of the biological mechanisms that support resilience and influence the development of aging-related diseases.
BioAge’s collaboration with Norwegian diagnostics company Age Labs gives the company exclusive access to data produced from the HUNT samples for drug discovery purposes. These samples were collected throughout various life stages of the participants, providing insights into the transition from midlife health to late-life disease, including cardiometabolic conditions, cognitive decline, dementia and other chronic illnesses.
By integrating these new data into its existing discovery engine – already driven more than 50 million molecular measurements from aging cohorts – BioAge aims to enhance its ability to identify and validate targets that can mitigate or prevent aging-related pathologies.
We spoke to BioAge co-founder Dr Eric Morgen, who told us longitudinal biobanks like HUNT present a unique opportunity to illuminate the biology of aging and how it drives the earliest molecular shifts from health toward disease.
“This kind of data lets us watch the molecular changes happening as people transition from health to disease over years and decades,” he explained. “Most research looks at a snapshot – healthy people versus sick people at one point in time. With HUNT, we can track the same individuals across their life stages and see exactly which molecular pathways are shifting, years before disease becomes clinically apparent.”
According to Morgen, the real breakthrough potential from a drug discovery perspective comes from combining molecular data with real-world health outcomes, longitudinally and at scale.
“For each participant in HUNT, we will see their molecular profile at multiple time points and how that changes when they develop conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or cognitive decline,” he said. “That kind of data is already rare and valuable. But when we scale this up to thousands of people over decades of their lives, that’s when we can start to discover patterns that point directly to druggable targets. It’s like building a roadmap of human aging biology that can show us exactly where and when to intervene.”
The new profiling effort will use Standard BioTools’ SomaScan assay, enabling the quantification of thousands of proteins in each sample. BioAge will apply machine learning approaches to correlate these molecular profiles with disease onset and progression, leveraging both the depth of the protein data and the richness of the longitudinal clinical information. The approach is designed to reveal molecular signatures that underlie healthy aging, disease resistance and functional resilience, offering novel insights into potential drug targets.
BioAge’s current pipeline includes BGE-102, a brain-penetrant, orally available NLRP3 inhibitor being developed for obesity. The compound has shown robust weight loss effects in preclinical studies, both as a standalone therapy and in combination with GLP-1 receptor agonists. The company recently announced its plans to submit an Investigational New Drug application for BGE-102 and initiate a Phase 1 trial this year. Additional preclinical programs include long-acting injectable and oral small molecule agonists targeting the APJ receptor for obesity, along with other candidates aimed at metabolic aging pathways identified through BioAge’s longevity-focused data platform.
Photographs courtesy of BioAge
The post BioAge taps European biobank for human aging data appeared first on Longevity.Technology – Latest News, Opinions, Analysis and Research.
