What
The Goal: Create the world's first sleep vaccine.
Ozempic is one of the most powerful therapies of the decade by directly modulating hormonal biophysical pathways. These pathways are often the key bottlenecks in biological signalling, allowing for effective biological modification. Analogously, modulation of key sleep pathways lets us pioneer safe approaches to reclaim thousands of waking hours -- without the effects of sleep deprivation.
Using naturally occuring sleeper genes, we will develop a targeted therapy that safely decreases sleep need. A.K.A: Ozempic for sleep.
Why
We spend one-third of our lives asleep. Yet, a small subset of individuals thrive on four to six hours of sleep per night. They carry short sleeper gene variants, allowing them to remain healthy while sleeping less. Researchers report those short sleepers to have more energy, vigor, and disease resistance than baseline, indicating that the same gene variants compress sleep and improve daytime quality of life.
We want to enable everyone to experience this.
Besides the benefits of requiring less sleep and broad health improvements, this therapy could act as a protection from narcolepsy and Alzheimer's risk. Humans and mice with these "supersleeper" genotypes seem more resistant to neurodegeneration, and the genes may also be used to treat sleep disorders by regulating the production of key neuropeptides like orexin.
Our Roadmap
Development Stages
Mouse Prototype
First mouse prototype in less than a year, leveraging the Church lab infrastructure at Harvard Medical School.
Human-Ready Prototype
Human-ready prototype in less than three years, focusing on severe cases of narcolepsy, hypersomnia, and depression.
Small Molecule Development
Development of small molecules for mass-market adoption, following the Ozempic model.
Market Opportunity
Therapies compressing sleep could serve millions. Their market is vast - though of course, we think better sleep is priceless.
- Parkinson's: $4.2b
- Alzheimer's & Cognitive Decline: $4.82b
- Treatment-Resistant Depression: $1.69b
- Obstructive Sleep Apnea: $1.93b
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: $47m
- Narcolepsy: $3.54b
- Idiopathic Hypersomnia: $242m
Team
Isaak Freeman
Church/Boyden Labs at MIT
Helena Rosengarten
MD-PhD, Harvard Medical
Raeez Lorgat
Early Stripe, MIT Math/CS
Siddharth Iyer
MIT PhD, NSF Fellow
Rohit Arora
Harvard PhD, Church Lab
Dr. George Church
Harvard Medical School
Scientific Advisors
Dr. Thomas Scammell
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Adam Marblestone
Convergent Research
Dr. Jenny Tam
Church Lab
Dr. Tyler Cowen
Emergent Ventures
Dr. Fei Chen
Harvard/Broad Institute
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