A recent Vancouver Province article on anti-aging research in BC included a report on ViDA Therapeutics and their efforts to analyze and control the effects of an immune-system enzyme called granzyme B.
The enzyme’s usual role in the human body is to target and kill infected cells – not a function that you would want to curtail. But it turns out that Granzyme B is equally like to do harm: researchers at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital discovered significant levels of extracellular granzyme B in aged and damaged human skin. A research team, led by Professor David Granville and postdoctoral fellow Leigh Parkinson, found when skin cells produce and release granzyme B in response to UV light, it triggers the breakdown of collagen, a structural protein that makes skin firm. They also discovered high levels of the enzyme in the occurrence of other ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis, fibrosis and heart disease.
Knowing he was onto something, Granville got together with co-founder Alistair Duncan to launch viDA – a private, venture-backed biopharmaceutical company working on ways to inhibit granzyme B.
“Granzyme B is running amok and causing damage from rheumatoid arthritis to heart conditions to neural inflammation,” Duncan told the Province. “If you picture granzyme B as a Pac-Man that goes around gobbling, we stick a sock in its mouth so it can’t gobble anymore, allowing the healing process to begin.”
Many eyebrows were raised when the company’s findings were published in Dec 2014 in Aging Cell Journal. In addition to exploring how granzyme B inhibitors can be used to treat aging skin and lupus related skin lesions, the company is investigating the treatment of other conditions like aneurysms and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, caused by the breakdown of collagen and other proteins that provide structure to blood vessels and lung passages.
