APTA Therapeutics is currently focused on the clinical development of rovunaptabin in heart failure and in post viral infectious diseases.
APTA Therapeutics is currently focused on the clinical development of rovunaptabin in heart failure and in post viral infectious diseases.
One of the most well-studied GPCRs in cardiovascular physiology is the beta1-adrenergic receptor. These receptors respond to catecholamines like epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and are central to the regulation of cardiac output.
Chronic stimulation of the beta1-adrenergic receptor can lead to hypertrophy, cell death and adverse cardiac remodeling, all of which are hallmarks of heart failure.
There is substantial clinical evidence that implicates RAbs as a key player in the development of cardiovascular diseases as they can specifically activate beta1-adrenergic receptors often for extended periods of time potentially leading to apoptosis of cardiomyocytes.
Blocking GPCRs with beta-blockers (beta1-adrenergic receptor antagonists) has become a cornerstone of heart failure treatment. However, there remains a substantial number of patients who respond poorly underlining a significant unmet medical need.
In a recently completed phase 2a clinical study in subjects with heart failure (NCT04192214), rovunaptabin showed good safety and tolerability with an encouraging improvement of cardiac performance in treated patients warranting further clinical studies to confirm these results in a larger cohort.
Post-viral infectious diseases refer to a group of infection-associated chronic conditions (IACC) that arise or persist after an acute infection, e.g. Long COVID (LC) occurring after SARS-CoV-2 infection. For example, individuals affected by SARS-CoV-2 or other viruses, can go on to develop myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) a complex and usually chronic disease characterized by disabling symptoms such as profound fatigue, post-exertional malaise, unrefreshing sleep and cognitive impairment. Although the exact pathogenesis of ME/CFS is not known, the immune system is believed to play an important role.
Rovunaptabin was recently evaluated in a placebo-controlled Phase 2 clinical study (BLOC) involving 114 patients with long COVID (NCT05911009) and was found to be safe and well tolerated. Post-hoc analyses of the study data are ongoing.
The University Hospital of Erlangen recently completed an investigator initiated Phase 2a study (reCOVer) of rovunaptabin in patients with post-COVID syndrome. The study could confirm the safety and tolerability of rovunaptabin and showed promising clinical effects (EudraCT, 2022-001781-35). The results of the study were published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, part of The Lancet group (Vol 86 August, 2025). Rovunaptabin was provided by APTA Therapeutics for the reCOVer study.
In collaboration with renowned medical institutions, our priority is to support the further clinical development of rovunaptabin in post-viral infectious diseases and in heart failure to gain additional clinical data necessary for studies in larger cohorts.
APTA Therapeutics believes the therapeutic potential of rovunaptabin may be applicable to other RAb-related diseases and aims to support additional studies to explore its clinical effects.
By exploiting the power of DNA-based aptamers the company hopes to further strengthen its pipeline.
Many promising therapies fail not because they are ineffective, but because they are tested in patient populations that are too broad or misclassified.
Developing robust diagnostic tools needed to identify the right patients most likely to benefit from a specific intervention, can be very challenging but necessary to increase the chance of success in clinical trials and accelerate the approval of effective therapies.
APTA Therapeutics will work with specialized research teams to develop a molecular profiling approach to better define RAbs in patients with heart failure and post-viral infectious diseases.