In this newsletter

✅ The hidden power of “proximity” in biology. ✅ How chemoproteomics maps drug interactions inside living cells. ✅ A founder chasing his “white whale”. ✅ Why small molecules were left behind - and why they’re back.

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Longevity Builders tells the stories of those aiming to tackle aging - focusing on the science they’re building, the hurdles they face, and the people willing to do whatever it takes.

In this installment, we feature General Proximity, a San Francisco biotech reimagining what small molecules can do - by turning them into tools to control biology’s most elusive processes.

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Control proximity and you control biology

Armand Cognetta tells me there’s one target he’s obsessed with. ”Above all the others,” he says. While the rest of the world considers it undruggable - and pharma companies have failed, time and again - his startup, San Francisco–based General Proximity, has it in its crosshairs. This target is his white whale - so critical, he says, that it would be worth ”spending your entire life on.”

He won’t tell me what it is. Not yet. But I get the sense he’s counting the days until he can.

”Our first clinical trial won't be an aging trial,” Armand says, “but it'll be for a target that we then can, with the same drug, expand into an aging indication. It’s in an area where we think it will have massive impact. It’s for every human on the planet. There’s not many drugs like that.”

So how do you go after a target the world has already given up on?

That’s where a reimagining of small molecules comes into the picture.

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