Each year, about 1.5 million people sustain acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), of which one third die as a result.  An estimated $60 billion is spent per year to treat heart disease, but more than half of the patients who have a first heart attack go on to have subsequent attacks, indicating that approved drugs are not sufficiently addressing the medical need.

A therapeutic molecule that can regenerate tissue that has been damaged by acute ischemia holds great promise for the treatment of  patients stricken by acute myocardial infarction. Current treatments are aimed at reducing injury to cardiac tissue, but no treatments are approved to regenerate cardiac tissue and restore function.  Fate’s FT101 program has the potential to regenerate damaged tissue resulting from ischemic conditions, such as acute myocardial infarction. Other conditions that involve acute ischemia include solid organ transplants, such as heart, lung, liver and kidney transplants.

FT101 is a recombinant version of a naturally-occurring human protein. The endogenous protein is seen to confer survival, proliferation and ultimately regenerative effect via its stimulation of GP130-based cell signaling pathways.  FT101 has been shown in multiple species to induce cardiac regeneration and improve post-infarct cardiac function when administered systemically and in a clinically relevant timeframe (twenty-four hours after ischemic insult).  Fate is currently optimizing selected protein forms and performing preclinical evaluation of its optimized forms in various models of ischemia.