ReAlta Life Sciences Receives EMA Orphan Drug Designation for RLS-0071 (pegtarazimod) for the Treatment of Graft-Versus-Host Disease
The Orphan Drug Designation was supported by preliminary data from ReAlta's ongoing Phase 2 trial, which included data from the initial cohort of steroid-refractory Acute GvHD (aGvHD) patients. ReAlta is currently enrolling the Phase 2, open-label clinical trial of pegtarazimod for hospitalized patients with steroid-refractory aGvHD (NCT06343792) at clinical sites in the United States, Germany, and Spain. The Company expects to report data from additional cohorts of patients enrolled in this trial in 2026. In August 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Orphan Drug Designation and Fast Track Designation to pegtarazimod for the treatment of aGvHD.
'Receiving EMA Orphan Drug Designation represents a significant new regulatory milestone in our efforts to address the urgent unmet need in aGvHD, and we are particularly encouraged by the EMA's positive feedback to our initial cohort of Phase 2 data,' said David Marek, Chief Executive Officer of ReAlta. 'This designation, alongside our existing FDA Orphan Drug and Fast Track Designations for aGvHD, validates the potential of our novel dual-targeting approach to modulate both neutrophil and complement-mediated inflammation as we advance our Phase 2 trial to bring this potential therapy to aGvHD patients in Europe.'
Kenji Cunnion, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer of ReAlta, commented, 'Our targeted intervention addresses the specific pathways driving tissue damage, including the inhibition of extracellular myeloperoxidase, NETosis and neutrophil elastase, while preserving beneficial immune function, unlike broadly immunosuppressive approaches to treat aGvHD. The compelling preclinical and clinical data that we have generated shows pegtarazimod's potential to address the neutrophil-driven disease process in patients with lower gastrointestinal (GI) aGvHD that is the most difficult to treat and has the highest rate of mortality.'
The EMA grants Orphan Drug Designation to medicines intended for the treatment, diagnosis or prevention of rare, life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases or conditions that affect fewer than five in 10,000 people in the European Union. This designation provides pharmaceutical companies with certain benefits including reduced regulatory fees, clinical protocol assistance, and up to 10 years of market exclusivity in the European Union, if approved.
About the Phase 2 aGvHD Trial and RLS-0071 (pegtarazimod)
The Phase 2 trial (NCT06343792) is an open-label, prospective, dose-escalation trial currently enrolling patients across clinical sites in the United States, Germany, and Spain, evaluating pegtarazimod in hospitalized patients with moderate to very severe steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease. Pegtarazimod is a 15-amino-acid peptide that uniquely targets both humoral and cellular inflammation and is the Company's lead therapeutic candidate. The peptide works by selectively inhibiting complement activation at C1, as well as myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation – key mechanisms that drive the inflammatory cascade and tissue damage when donor immune cells attack recipient tissues following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
About ReAlta Life Sciences
ReAlta Life Sciences, Inc. is a clinical mid-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to addressing life threatening rare and acute inflammatory diseases by rebalancing the inflammatory response. The Company's EPICC peptide platform leverages discoveries from the human astrovirus (HAstV-1), which uniquely inhibits components of the innate immune system. ReAlta's therapeutic peptides employ the dual-targeting mechanisms of HAstV-1 to modulate both complement and innate inflammatory pathways by inhibiting complement cascade activation and two key neutrophil-driven mechanisms: myeloperoxidase (MPO) and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). The Company's lead candidate, RLS-0071 (pegtarazimod), has received FDA Orphan Drug Designation and Fast Track Designations for hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), a devastating disease that causes brain damage and high mortality in oxygen-deprived newborns; FDA Orphan Drug and Fast Track Designations for acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD) associated with bone marrow and stem cell transplants; Orphan Drug Designation by the European Medicines Agency for both HIE and GvHD; and FDA IND clearance for acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Founded in 2018, ReAlta operates in Norfolk, Virginia and Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.realtalifesciences.com.
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