Minicircle launched in 2019 with the goal of creating safe, accessible gene therapy treatments that could support human healthspan and mitigate suffering from preventable health conditions on a population level. Driven by my own personal experiences observing close friends and family with life-altering, incurable diseases, Minicircle’s primary goal is to improve quality of life for as many people as possible. The ultimate objective is to scale the treatments widely and make them increasingly easy to access in the years to come. We sat down with Mac Davis, CEO and Founder of Minicircle to find out more about them.

Minicircle has created a gene therapy platform that administers the treatment via non-invasive injection. This delivery method employs DNA plasmids, which are small, circular strands of DNA that are easy to inject subcutaneously and cheap to manufacture. These plasmids don’t directly integrate with or alter the recipient’s DNA, but rather add to existing DNA, making them transient, which is a strong differentiator compared to other gene therapy platforms.

Their current gene therapy offering revolves around a protein called follistatin, which has a number of different use cases. Follistatin is naturally occurring in the body and facilitates muscle growth by binding to myostatin, which inhibits muscle growth. Everyone who comes to Minicircle has a different goal in mind, from putting on muscle mass, to enhancing general longevity and healthspan, to mitigating frailty - but it generally boils down to improving quality of life and putting your body in the best position to combat age-related health conditions. Most Minicircle patients report an increase in lean mass, decrease in body fat percentage, lower epigenetic age, and overall improvement in general functioning and well-being. In particular, they’re excited about follistatin’s potential to support those with muscle-wasting conditions like muscular dystrophy, which could have a powerful impact on public health interventions for generations to come.

Thos interested in learning about Minicircle’s therapies and pricing can go to the website and fill out a form with their contact information. They will then be put in touch with one of their partner clinics, who will guide them through the process of getting necessary testing before traveling to the clinic to receive the therapy. The process itself is very quick. The injection takes just a few minutes, with a required 30 minute monitoring period after.

The life cycle of the therapy can vary depending on the individual’s biology and lifestyle habits, but the effects usually last up to a year - sometimes more, sometimes less. Most people who have received the therapy want to get it repeatedly to sustain the effects.