Vero Bioscience and Atria Health and Research Institute Announce Study to Measure Impact of GLP-1 Treatment on Proteomic Brain Age

Vero Bioscience, a predictive health company on a mission to end age-related chronic disease, and Atria Health & Research Institute, a leading health care practice and research institute dedicated to precision preventive medicine, today announced a six-month study to evaluate how the brain responds to GLP-1 (Tirzepatide) treatments. As the first initiative in a broader collaboration between Vero and Atria, this study integrates Vero’s OrganAge™ advanced proteomics technology to measure intervention response, going beyond traditional measures of overall biological age.

The study brings together Atria’s research-driven clinical practice and Vero’s proteomic OrganAge platform, built on technology developed at Stanford by Vero co-founder Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD. Wyss-Coray’s research showed that measuring organ-specific proteomic signatures in blood plasma can reveal distinct aging rates of individual organs. This collaboration is a critical step in moving those discoveries from the laboratory to clinical practice—and to the people they could help.

“Traditional biological aging clocks reduce a person to a single aggregate number. They may suggest someone is aging faster than expected, but not where or why, which leaves clinicians without a target,” said Dr. David Dodick, a neurologist and the Chief Science and Medical Officer at Atria. “We are working with Vero because their proteomic platform resolves aging at the level of individual organ and cellular systems. Applied to the brain, it gives us a quantitative, plasma-based signature of brain aging that we can track over time. This gives us a measurable benchmark for evaluating how specific interventions influence the trajectory of brain aging, and ultimately for determining which of them meaningfully protect the brain.”

“To establish Vero OrganAge as the gold standard for measuring organ health, we need clinical validation showing that the changes in protein patterns we measure reflect meaningful improvements in human health,” said Paul Coletta, co-founder and CEO at Vero. “Atria’s commitment to rigorous, preventive medicine makes them an ideal partner, and this collaboration is an important step toward demonstrating that we can objectively measure the impact of clinical interventions on organ health.”

The initial study has received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. It will test whether Vero’s plasma proteomic signatures accurately track changes in brain organ age in response to intervention, and whether those changes correspond with established clinical biomarkers of brain health. Specifically, the study investigates whether intervention with Tirzepatide translates into measurable changes in the aging trajectory of the brain and related organ systems over time.

Dr. Bart Demaerschalk, a neurologist and Chief Digital Health Officer at Atria, elaborated on the collaborative research: “We will track how targeted clinical interventions impact biological age over time. Alongside measuring baseline-to-conclusion changes in brain aging via Vero’s proteomic platform, our research will measure blood biomarkers of neurodegeneration, inflammation, endothelial function, cardiometabolic health, immunosenescence, neurovascular imaging markers, as well as wearable-derived measures of sleep, autonomic function, and physical activity. This multi-dimensional approach will allow us to map true biological rejuvenation with unprecedented resolution.”

To learn more about Vero Bioscience and for early access to OrganAge, visit verobioscience.com. To learn more about Atria Health & Research Institute, visit https://www.atria.org/.