Father, Husband, Scientist, Drug Discovery, Entrepreneur
Utah
Joined January 2023
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Novel NLRP3 Inhibitor Ofirnoflast Demonstrates Clinical Activity in Patients With Lower-Risk Myelodysplastic Syndromes hmpgloballearningnetwork.com…
What can people who stay healthy teach us about the next generation of medicines?
That was the question I brought to our discussion on “The Future of Therapeutics” at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit. I’ve been advocating for a shift in how we discover and develop drugs: give genetic resilience a central role. Some people carry substantial genetic risk for a disease yet remain healthy. Understanding why could reveal protective genetic modifiers—and the biological pathways through which they act.
The opportunity is to turn those insights into a deliberate approach to therapeutic discovery:
1. Find people who remain well despite genetic risk.
2. Identify and validate the modifiers that protect them.
3. Understand the biology behind that protection.
4. Develop therapies designed to reproduce its effects.
This is the ambition behind synthetic resilience: learning from naturally occurring protection to develop medicines that could extend that protection to others. We need to test this approach rigorously, with the potential to guide earlier intervention and help keep people healthy.
Thank you to my fellow panelists and the organizers for a thoughtful conversation in Abu Dhabi about where therapeutics can go next.
What would change in drug discovery if we made understanding protection a starting point?
#FutureHealthSummit #GeneticResilience #DrugDiscovery #Therapeutics #PrecisionMedicine
🤖 Made with AI
Living longer sounds great. Dying longer doesn't.
Medicine has gotten remarkably good at treating acute medical conditions. Antibiotics, safer childbirth, stents, C-sections. We have largely eliminated the quick deaths. But a recent review in the Journal of Internal Medicine put it plainly: death is now less often sudden and more often preceded by long periods of decline, multimorbidity, and dependency.
In other words, we didn't eliminate dying. We stretched it out. On the latest Good Medicine Podcast, my brother Dr. Jeremiah Bearss and I dig into why the longevity conversation is shifting from lifespan to healthspan, the years you spend healthy, independent, and functional.
A few ideas we kept coming back to:
Aging isn't just wear and tear. It's a set of measurable biological processes: DNA damage, failing protein cleanup, mitochondrial drift, and senescent zombie cells that drive chronic inflammation.
We don't all age at the same rate. Epigenetic clocks now let us measure biological age, and we can change the slope.
Stop playing whack-a-mole. Heart failure, kidney disease, diabetes, cancer: if aging is the common driver, slowing aging hits all of them at once.
Resilience is the real metric. The question isn't what disease you have today. It's your capacity to handle what happens tomorrow.
The first longevity drugs may already be here. I'd argue GLP-1s are a strong candidate, given their impact on obesity, diabetes, and cancer risk.
The hard part? There's still no regulatory path for slowing biological aging as an endpoint. That has to change. Personally, I'd take healthy until 85 and gone suddenly over 100 years with the last 20 spent in and out of the hospital. Every time.
What would you choose? youtu.be/7YyXxfcKF_0?si=73tF…
Can Having a Purpose Help You Live Longer?| Dr. David & Jeremiah Bearss youtu.be/8H-r2SRw4uE?si=E9Y6… via @YouTube
Beyond Bounds | What If Medicine Has Been Asking the Wrong Question? youtu.be/opcH6Q4uQf8?si=YmzS… via @YouTube
Varun Bafna, MD, discusses phase 2 results of ofirnoflast in LR-MDS youtu.be/gcO1pGriOW8?si=z9_k… via @YouTube
Dave Bearss retweeted
September 9 at 1:11 PM: Don't miss Dr. Alan List Plenary I, "The Emerging Promise of Biologically Rational Therapies for Lower Risk MDS."
Not in Houston? No problem! Watch all the highlights from #SOHO2026 on the mobile app: buff.ly/ECsYFPJ
Dave Bearss retweeted
Phase 2 data show ofirnoflast improves transfusion burden and hemoglobin in low-risk MDS
Presented at #SOHO2026 by Varun Bafna, MD, of @UCSF. Read more: buff.ly/pqKIxt5
Ofirnoflast improves transfusion burden, hemoglobin levels in LR-MDS sohoinsider.com/myelodysplas…
Halia Therapeutics to Present at the Morgan Stanley 24th Annual Global Healthcare Conference prn.to/4gSdydj
Dave Bearss retweeted
Are personalized cancer vaccines finally becoming a reality?
After the latest Phase 3 results from Moderna and Merck, Dr. David Bearss believes there is a real signal here.
Watch the full episode now — youtube.com/@GoodMedicinePod…
The Truth About Supplements | Dr. David & Jeremiah Bearss youtu.be/EV6o1lAjfws?si=2muc… via @YouTube
What a proud day for our family! Watching my son Andrew receive his white coat as he begins dental school at the University of Utah was incredibly special.
I am so proud of how hard this kid of mine works. His dedication, discipline, and determination have brought him to this exciting milestone, and I know those same qualities will help him become an outstanding dentist. The white coat represents not only years of effort, but also the responsibility and privilege of caring for others.
Congratulations, Andrew! We love you, we believe in you, and we cannot wait to see all that you accomplish on this journey. 🦷🥼❤️
Dave Bearss retweeted
AI is becoming a bigger part of drug discovery every year.
But according to Dr. Hari Vankayalapati, it still isn't making scientific decisions.
Wet labs remain the gold standard. AI helps generate ideas and identify patterns, but researchers still have to prove what's true.
Dave Bearss retweeted
Dr. David Bearss explains why promising therapies can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the medicine actually helped patients.
Understanding that changes the way we think about drug development.
🎧 Episode drops tomorrow.
Anti-Aging vs Healthspan | Dr. Jeremiah & David Bearss youtu.be/9OUacjvci6I?si=N6XZ… via @YouTube