Tornado Therapeutics

Tornado Therapeutics is a Cambrian Bioscience PipeCo working to develop safer, more effective rapalogs (mTOR inhibitor analogs of rapamycin) to treat disease and extend healthy lifespan.

The founding CEO was trailblazing medical scientist Joan Mannick, M.D., a veteran of Novartis and a pioneer of rapalogs as longevity therapeutics in humans. Altos Labs hired her as Chief Medical Officer in August 2025; the implications for Tornado are unclear as of early September of that year. The most recent news item on Tornado’s press and news page is from January 2024.

Rapamycin and Rapalogs
Rapamycin (AKA the transplant drug sirolimus) is the most well-validated longevity therapeutic in animal models. It extends healthy lifespan and prevents — or in some cases reverses — age-related functional declines in organisms from yeast and C. elegans worms to mice and nonhuman primates. Inhibiting its target mTOR therefore holds great promise for the health of aging humans. However, many researchers are concerned that the promise of rapamycin may not be realized at doses that people will tolerate, as the doses used in animal studies cause immune suppression, derangements of lipid and sugar metabolism, and a possible risk of some cancers.

Cambrian founded Tornado to develop structural analogs of rapamycin (rapalogs) to realize this promise without rapamycin’s potential for off-target side-effects. In early 2022, Cambrian licensed a portfolio of rapalogs from Novartis for development by Tornado Therapeutics, a dedicated Cambrian subsidiary led by Joan Mannick. They immediately moved the most advanced of these molecules into IND-enabling studies and a second asset into preclinical efficacy testing.

Tornado believes that their new candidates will be safer and more effective than currently-approved rapalogs, and their novelty creates the IP runway necessary to develop them for multiple novel clinical indications. Expert chemists at Novartis developed these molecules as either exceptionally selective mTORC1-specific inhibitors for treating diseases of aging and extending healthy lifespan, or as more potent mTORC2-specific inhibitors for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and some cancers.

TOR101
Tornado’s lead candidate, TOR-101, is a selective mTORC1 inhibitor that is free of rapamycin’s longer-term effect on mTORC2. Where everolimus has dose-limiting toxicity in rats at doses of 0.25-.5 mg/kg, there is no toxicity in any organ aside from the testes up to 250 mg/kg despite strong mTORC1 inhibition, and no toxicity at all in monkeys. Their initial target indications are viral respiratory tract infections and an oncology indication.

In July 2023, Tornado’s Chair of the Board indicated that the company would take TOR-101 into clinical trials in 2024. In January 2025, Mannick stated that they expected to take it to trials in 2025.

Other Rapalogs
TOR-103 is otherwise uncharacterized, but Tornado indicates that it is less advanced than TOR-101, but still intended for use in viral RTIs and oncology. Tornado additionally lists TOR-104 for autoimmune disease, and TOR-105 for dermatology.