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• Aspera Biomedicines, Inc. (“Aspera”) is a privately-held platform company that focuses on developing RNA modulatory and immuno-oncology drug assets to treat patients with refractory malignancies that have hijacked stem cell properties including the capacity to self-renew (divide without differentiating) and become dormant, albeit in a dysregulated manner. This property of “cancer stemness” is the main target of our drug development platforms.

 

• The first asset, Rebecsinib (17S-FD-895), is currently undergoing IND enabling studies as a selective splicing modulator that inhibits both ADAR1-mediated immune silencing and pro-survival MCL1-L expression that collectively drive therapy resistant cancer stem cell generation in a broad array of malignancies.  

 

• Other selective ADAR1 inhibitors are uniquely enabled by our purified human ADAR1 and lentiviral reporter technologies.

 

• Because ADAR1 inhibition overcomes immune checkpoint blockade resistance and prevents self-renewal of cancer stem cells (CSCs) while MCL1 inhibition prevents CSC survival, initial clinical trials will focus on relapsed/refractory myelofibrosis (MF), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), and secondary AML that have high levels of ADAR1 and MCL1.  

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• The Aspera management team founded Impact Biomedicines, Inc, which translated a $22 million investment into a $7 billion milestone-driven acquisition and resurrection of a cancer stemness blocking JAK2 inhibitor, Inrebic ®, which is now FDA and EMA approved to eradicate cancer stem cells in myelofibrosis.