News | Stroke | December 14, 2022

Preventing Millions of Strokes and Heart Attacks Doesn’t Have to Come with the Risk of Life-threatening Bleeding

Verseon’s scientific journey to highly promising therapeutic candidates for cardiovascular disease appears in European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 

Edwards Lifesciences identified the top data releases from 2022 that contributed most to shaping awareness about the extent and impact of underdiagnosis and undertreatment of aortic stenosis (AS).

December 14, 2022 — Verseon announced that the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has published a paper describing the company’s groundbreaking research that led to promising novel drug candidates for cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability in the world. Hundreds of millions of patients worldwide need anticoagulants to prevent clots that lead to life-threatening events like strokes, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolisms.  

However, currently prescribed so-called novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs) carry well-documented risks of major bleeds, which in many cases require hospitalization and can be life threatening. Developing drugs that prevent unwanted clots while preserving the body’s ability to stop excessive bleeding is the “Holy Grail” of anticoagulant drug programs. Verseon is developing a new generation of anticoagulants called PROACs (Precision Oral Anticoagulants) that address this very large unmet medical need. 

The peer-reviewed paper documents how Verseon’s medicinal chemistry team optimized various physicochemical properties — including potency, selectivity, and in vivo stability — of compounds from a novel class called N-acylpyrazoles. The resulting selective reversible covalent thrombin inhibitors are highly effective at preventing clots in animal models. Yet unlike NOACs, they do not inhibit thrombin-mediated activation of platelets, a critical step to stop injury-induced bleeding. Because of their unique mechanism of action, Verseon’s drug candidates have shown far lower bleeding risks in animal models. 

“We are pleased to document the great work and insights that went into the discovery and development of this novel class of direct thrombin inhibitors with unique pharmacology,” commented Dr. David Kita, Verseon’s Chief Scientific Officer. “We look forward to describing further work behind the development of our first PROAC clinical candidate (VE-1902), which we expect will address a significant unmet medical need affecting a very large number of cardiovascular patients worldwide.” 

The scientific paper, entitled “Discovery of novel N-acylpyrazoles as potent and selective thrombin inhibitors,” is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejmech.2022.114855

 

For more information: www.verseon.com 


Related Content

News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

April 20, 2023 — Researchers led by Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin (UT) have developed ...

Home April 20, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

April 5, 2023 — Acarix, a leader in acoustic and AI-based cardiac diagnostics, announced the release of a new study ...

Home April 05, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 29, 2023 — Irregular sleep patterns may play a role in the pathophysiologic development of cardiovascular disease ...

Home March 29, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 27, 2023 — Tenax Therapeutics, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on identifying, developing and ...

Home March 27, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 24, 2023 — Vaxxinity, Inc., a Cape Canaveral, FL-based company pioneering the development of a new class of ...

Home March 24, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 22, 2023 — Ancora Heart, Inc., a privately-held Santa Clara, CA-based company developing a completely ...

Home March 22, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 21, 2023 — The first platform to combine real-world cardiology data from millions of people in multiple European ...

Home March 21, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 13, 2023 — BioCardia, Inc., developer of cellular and cell-derived therapeutics for the treatment of ...

Home March 13, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 8, 2023 — A unique community-based partnership, the African American Heart Study, will be conducted to measure the ...

Home March 08, 2023
Home
News | Cardiovascular Clinical Studies

March 6, 2023 — A multifaceted intervention to improve prescribing practices increased the likelihood that patients with ...

Home March 06, 2023
Home
Subscribe Now