Jon Rees

Jon Rees is the chief executive officer and co-founder of MitoRx Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing the next generation of obesity and metabolic-health treatments. Rather than suppressing appetite the way GLP-1 drugs do, MitoRx is developing a small molecule that targets the mitochondria to address obesity at its root cause, aiming to restore metabolic flexibility and improve body composition without reducing food intake.

Rees appeared on Open Door Salon alongside Ali Pashazadeh, founder and CEO of Treehill Partners and a practicing surgeon, for a conversation on the promise and the limits of GLP-1 drugs. While crediting GLP-1s with transforming the obesity market and carrying real benefits, including an apparent anti-addictive effect, Rees focused on their hidden costs.

Chief among those, he argued, is the cost of a starvation response: the loss of lean muscle mass, which he sees as eroding a patient’s autonomy to manage their own weight after treatment. His company’s goal is a therapy that lets patients retain lean mass and avoid the gastrointestinal and other side effects that drive the high discontinuation rates seen with current drugs.

Rees also made a prevention argument that gives the episode its name, questioning why society tolerates an environment engineered against metabolic health: why, he asked, is CVS selling five-kilo party packs of M&Ms alongside Ozempic? The most durable answer to obesity, he argued, combines better medicines for the highest-risk patients with a public responsibility to regulate the food environment that creates the disease.