Ichor Life Sciences

Ichor Life Sciences (formerly Ichor Therapeautics) is a vertically-integrated biopharmaceutical company with complete preclinical R&D capabilities, including acting as a preclinical contract research organization (CRO), and offering protein expression and purification services, structural biology services, and biophysical assays, with capabilities specialized for assay development, target validation, and high-throughput screening support.

Ichor was founded in 2013 by Dr. Kelsey Moody during his time as a medical student at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. Using a $540k seed grant awarded by the Life Extension Foundation, Ichor Life Sciences established a functional living room laboratory in Tipperary Hill. The living room laboratory was equipped for biological research. Initial programs at the company focused on stem cell biology, which required capabilities to support mammalian cell culture, flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy.

Working with his father, a retired math teacher and contractor, Dr. Moody and company constructed a specific-pathogen free vivarium suitable for research with immunocompromised mice in the apartment’s spare bedroom. This enabled advanced husbandry capabilities at the company, including xenograft models.

With over $1 million in new funding led by Ichor’s first major investor and partner Roger Bagg, multiple research programs in progress, and a growing client base for contract research, Ichor relocated south of Syracuse to rural LaFayette and established its first commercial research facilities. Today, the campus comprises two buildings.

Since these humble beginnings, Ichor has risen to prominence as among the most reputable and longest established longevity biotech companies. The company’s strong publication record and PhD program are a testament to the quality standard for scientific excellence that defines Ichor.

LYSOCLEAR
In 2014, the Ichor team solved a series of technical problems that had prevented further development of SENS Research Foundation’s macular degeneration enzyme therapy program and acquired all rights to it.

In 2017, Ichor Life Sciences — then known as Ichor Therapeutics — announced the launch of LYSOCLEAR, a therapeutic approach that proposes to prevent, arrest, or reverse age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), the leading cause of blindness in persons over the age of 65, and the mechanistically related genetic disease Stargardt macular degeneration, by degrading the key intracellular waste product A2E.

Key to the development of ARMD is metabolic toxicity in retinal pigmented epithelial (RPE) cells, which are macrophage-like waste-clearing cells that “eat” the damaged membranes of photoreceptors. The photoreceptors’ light-sensing function, however, depends on a chemical flip-flop between two forms of vitamin A — a flip-flop whose more reactive side can generate a range of aggregated molecules including A2E. As RPE engulf and digest dying photoreceptor debris, they eventually become poisoned by A2E and its cousins, and they become dysfunctional, die, and decompose. The end result is ARMD.

LYSOCLEAR is both the spinout company and the engineered enzyme candidate originally identified at Lifespan Research Institute. The starting enzyme behind LYSOCLEAR was a peroxidase that was effective in destroying A2E in vitro. Kelsey Moody and his colleagues at Ichor Life Sciences selected the best of these (the common enzyme manganese peroxidase, or MnP) and engineered it to allow it to pass harmlessly through the circulation, penetrate cells, and reach the lysosome, where it could degrade A2E.

When tested in RPE cells that were pre-loaded with A2E, the engineered enzyme broke down A2E and several related compounds with limited toxic effects. Ichor scientists then tested it in mice with a genetic form of macular degeneration. Six weekly doses of LYSOCLEAR eliminated nearly a third of the A2E and rekated wastes in the mice’s eyes.

Investigational New Drug application and Phase 1 clinical trials were slated for 2018, and they aim to test this new therapy in humans to identify the optimal dosages and regimen of application. Unfortunately, Ichor tried manufacturing LYSOCLEAR at the quality standards required for human drug testing, they found that the branching of the sugars that allow the enzyme to enter cells and be directed to the lysosome was too inconsistent for use as a human therapy. Even when Ichor tried an entirely new biomanufacturing technique to produce the enzyme, they still could not get the branching pattern consistent.

So despite its promise, these “Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls” (CMC) problems spelled the end for the original LYSOCLEAR enzyme. Ichor has moved on to looking at alternative enzymes that might do the essential task (safely breaking down A2E) but be free of this limitation.

Importantly, current therapies for ARMD are only effective against the relatively rare “wet” form of the disease. 80-90% of the people suffering from  ARMD are afflicted with the “dry” form. Clearing A2E from aging RPE would potentially prevent and arrest both forms.

Cypris Therapeutics
Cypris Therapeutics is a drug discovery company created by Ichor in 2024 as a spinout of Florida State University research. Its proprietary synthetic chemistry technology is said to  enable them to synthesize and iterate on complex drug moieties that are unattainable by previous approaches, yielding superior  therapeutic properties and reducing side effects. Using this platform, the scientific founders developed novel candidates for treatment of difficult-to-treat diseases such as glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer.

Ichor led Cypris’ $500,000 pre-seed funding round, and incubates on Ichor’s campus, giving it access to Ichor’s state-of-the-art equipment as well as its expertise in drug discovery and development.

That same year, Cypris won FSU’s annual Discovery Challenge event, a “Shark Tank”-style competition for FSU spinouts, winning both the $50,000 first prize from the investor panel as well as the $10,000 crowd favorite award.

Lento Bio
Lento Bio, Inc. is a preclinical pharmaceutical company focused on developing small-molecule therapeutics to target molecular damage that drives diseases of aging. Its initial focus is on developing pharmaceutical eyedrops that break advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) involved in stiffening the lens of the eye. This stiffening leads to presbyopia (age-related farsightedness), so breaking these AGE is expected to restore the lens’ flexibility and thus prevent and reverse this common disorder of vision.

Lento Bio was launched in 2022, supported and incubated by Ichor, initially at Clarkson University’s Peyton Hall Biotechnology Incubator; later that year, Ichor led an oversubscribed $680,000  seed round.

Presbyopia is caused by stiffening of the eye lens, which stems from molecular crosslinks including advanced glycation end products (AGE) that cause tissue rigidity. The small-molecule drugs being developed by Lento Bio will target underlying molecular damage accumulation with the goal of reversing the process of tissue-stiffening in the ocular lens. Upon successful completion of its first project, Lento Bio plans to apply its anti-glycation products more widely to include systemic diseases of aging.

MitoChem Therapeutics
MitoChem Therapeutics is a discovery-phase biopharmaceutical company working to develop mitochondrial therapeutics for the treatment of vision loss from retinitis pigmentosa (RP), age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), and glaucoma.

MitoChem claims that it has developed a new class of small molecules that  protect mitochondrial structure and function from metabolic and oxidative stress irrespective of its underlying cause. They claim that the mechanism of action underlying their approach is unique, and its target first-in-class.

The lead compound, MC16, is optimized for ocular delivery, and their first indication is retinitis pigmentosa, for which they were awarded Orphan Drug status by FDA in 2021 Photoreceptors — the nerve cells in the eye that convert light into signals for the brain — have very high energy  demands and calcium ion transients, and mitochondrial dysfunction is implicated in RP, ARMD, glaucoma, and other ocular disorders. However, they say their approach has the potential to treat a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases.

Ichor invested $1.5 million in MitoChem in 2022 as part of a “strategic push by Ichor to de-risk therapeutics with longevity applications by targeting ocular indications, while further bolstering its preclinical service offerings.” South Carolina Research Authority’s investment affiliate, SC Launch,  invested a further $200,000 later that year.

Antoxerene
Antoxerene is an Ichor portfolio company that uses proprietary RecombiPure expression technology to generate proteins that cannot be manufactured at scale using traditional approaches, enabling screening on many previously “undruggable” targets relevant to the biology of aging.

Under a co-development deal with Finger Lakes Bio, Antoxerene used RecombiPure to develop screens for the p53/MDM2 pathway, a major oncology target, and the p53/FOXO4 pathway, a  pathway involved in the survival of senescent cells, among others. Antoxerene subsequently entered into a joint venture with Juvenescence called FoxBio to develop senolytic drugs based on the latter interaction, securing $10M in the process from Kizoo Technology Ventures and other investors.

As of August 2025, Antoxerene is no longer prominent on the Ichor website, and its own website is moribund; we judge it likely that this unit is no longer active.