Rejuvenate Bio Receives $4M in Funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)
Summary
SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Rejuvenate Bio, announced today that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded the company a $4M grant to complete IND-enabling activities for the development of RJB-0402 for the treatment of desmoplakin gene variant arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (DSP ACM).RJB-0402 is a novel systemically administered investigational AAV8 gene therapy that drives liver specific expression of FGF21 protein, targeting multiple key pathological drivers of DSP ACM. Furthermore, clinical efficacy of RJB-0402 in DSP ACM may form the basis for the treatment in other forms of ACM.DSP ACM is a rare, severe, life-threatening, and debilitating disease that typically manifests in young adults as a high risk of life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias, sudden cardiac death, and progression to heart failure, said Dan Oliver, CEO & Co-Founder, Rejuvenate Bio. We are confident that RJB-0402, a one-time gene therapy, could be a transformative regenerative medicine and the first disease modifying therapy to address the unmet medical need of DSP ACM patients, and the recent funding from CIRM will enable us to initiate our first in human clinical trial.Nonclinical proof-of-concept studies in the ACM mouse model showed that RJB-0402 significantly improved cardiac structure, function, and markedly reduced the arrhythmia burden, normalizing premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) to wild type levels. We look forward to supporting Rejuvenate Bio in bringing this regenerative therapy to patients with this degenerative disease.DSP ACM is a severe, life-threatening, and debilitating, rare autosomal recessive disease that results in ventricular arrhythmias that are often life threatening and progressive cardiac dysfunction caused by fibrofatty replacement of ventricular myocardium which can lead to heart failure for which no disease modifying therapies exist. For more information, visit www.rejuvenatebio.com.At CIRM, we never forget that we were created by the people of California to accelerate stem cell treatments to patients with unmet medical needs, and act with a sense of urgency to succeed in that mission.To meet this challenge, our team of highly trained and experienced professionals actively partners with both academia and industry in a hands-on, entrepreneurial environment to fast track the development of todays most promising stem cell technologies.With $5.5 billion in funding and more than 150 active stem cell programs in our portfolio, CIRM is the worlds largest institution dedicated to helping people by bringing the future of cellular medicine closer to reality.For more information go to www.cirm.ca.gov.