Amplifier Therapeutics, a Sweden-based biopharmaceutical company, is focused on the development of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activator compounds to treat diseases associated with aging including metabolic conditions, cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, and cancer.
This review article provides an overview of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) as a cellular energy sensor and discusses recent findings on AMPK’s role in regulating carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, mitochondrial and lysosomal homeostasis, and DNA repair. This article also presents a role of AMPK in cancer, obesity, diabetes, and other disorders where activating AMPK may possibly exert beneficial effects.
This scientific article presents O304 preclinical data showing its ability to mitigate metabolic dysfunction by improving the ability of cells to utilize nutrients and produce energy and to improving cardiac function in aged mice.
This review article provides an overview of the therapeutic potential of indirect and direct AMPK activators across multiple disease areas including metabolic diseases, cancer, chronic kidney disease, and ageing, while also highlighting drug development challenges to approval.
This foundational preclinical work evaluating AMPK’s role as a master regulator of energy homeostasis and showing O304 as a PAN-AMPK activator, was conducted by Amplifier founders, Drs. Thomas and Helena Edlund. They show that treatment with O304 activated AMPK in the heart, increased cardiac glucose uptake, reduced cardiac glycogen levels, and improved left ventricular stroke volume in treated mice, but it did not increase heart weight in mice or rats. O304 treatment in diet-induced obese mice also increased glucose uptake in skeletal muscle, reduced β cell stress, and promoted β cell rest.
This review article provides an overview of the various upstream processes that either activate or inhibit the AMPK signaling responsiveness, but also the many age-related changes can potentially suppress AMPK activation.