Ketosis, as a medicine
Ketosis is one of the best-documented metabolic interventions in medicine. For a century it could be reached only by strict diet or by short-acting supplements. Senovia develops drugs that deliver its benefits instead.
Ketosis changes the course of disease in people.
When the body runs on ketones, the effects reach the brain, the heart, the liver and the immune system. Ketone bodies are fuels and also signalling molecules, with receptor, inflammatory and gene-regulatory targets of their own.
Children with drug-resistant epilepsy whose seizures fell by more than half on a ketogenic diet, against usual care.
Insulin users who reduced or stopped insulin over a year of sustained nutritional ketosis, as HbA1c fell from 7.6% to 6.3%.
Rise in cardiac output when patients with heart failure received the ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate.
Every way of reaching ketosis has hit a ceiling.
The benefit depends on holding blood ketones in a therapeutic range every day, for months or years. None of the existing approaches can do that.
Hard to sustain. Strict restriction under clinical supervision. Fewer than half of adults with epilepsy stay on it.
Low potency, capped dose. Blood levels rise modestly, and every dose carries a mineral load that limits how much can be taken.
Short-acting. Levels peak and return to baseline within three to four hours, so large doses are needed several times a day.
Weak and poorly tolerated. Brief, modest rises in ketones, with gastrointestinal side effects that limit the dose.
Ketogenic therapy has been used in medicine since 1921. No drug has yet delivered its benefits to patients.
Senovia designed new molecules to clear every ceiling.
Senovia's drugs are new chemical entities, built from the start for one profile: therapeutic ketosis held across the day from a single oral dose, with a normal diet, at a dose patients can take for years.
| What a ketosis drug needs | Ketogenic diet | Ketone salts | Ketone esters | MCT oil | Senovia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No change in diet | |||||
| Therapeutic levels held across the day | |||||
| One oral dose a day | n/a | ||||
| Tolerable for long-term use | |||||
| Low cost at scale |
Half-life in blood.
Half-life of the engineered drug.
Incretin biology was proven for decades before it became one of the largest drug classes in medicine. The change was chemistry that made the signal last. Ketosis had the same kind of delivery problem, and Senovia has solved it.
The benefits of ketosis, as a prescription, across medicine.
SNV-101. Adjunctive therapy alongside existing antiseizure medicines.
SNV-102. Alone and alongside GLP-1-based medicines.
Cardiac energy supply and function.
Brain energy metabolism.
Tumor and host metabolism alongside standard therapy.
Chronic inflammatory disease and host response.
Data rooms for both lead programs.
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