A drug research company best known for trials on a disease that afflicted the late Orange County fitness exec Augie Nieto has now participated in a historic surgery—the first-ever transplant of a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a human being.
Irvine-based Eledon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: ELDN) on March 21 said that its medication called tegoprubart was used as a component of the immunosuppressive treatment regimen following the transplant.
The procedure was completed on March 16 at Massachusetts General Hospital on a 62-year-old man living with end-stage kidney disease.
“This procedure represents a significant milestone in the transplantation field and a promising step to address a medical crisis: the worldwide shortage of available organs,” Dr. Leonardo Riella, medical director for Kidney Transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a statement.
“Xenotransplantation represents a unique approach with the potential to provide patients with additional options to access life-saving treatments in a timely manner.”
Eledon’s announcement signals it is making progress in shifting into its newest research area of kidney transplants. Since December, the company’s shares have almost doubled to $2.06 and a $50 million market cap.
Name Change
The company, formerly known as Novus Therapeutics Inc., in 2020 said its medication to treat patients with ear, nose and throat disorders didn’t achieve statistical significance. It canceled that program and changed its name.
Later that year, it acquired Anelixis Therapeutics, which owned the intellectual property for tegoprubart, a medication aiming to prevent a body from rejecting a transplant. Anelixis was founded by Dr. Steven Perrin, who is now Eledon’s president and chief scientific officer.
Over the past decade, Perrin has also worked with the ALS Therapy Development Institute to develop the world’s largest ALS drug development program.
In 2022, Eledon revealed positive topline results from a Phase 2a trial for people with ALS, the disease that afflicted Nieto, the founder of Life Fitness as well as chairman of the local nonprofit Augie’s Quest to Cure ALS.
Nieto died in February last year.
Early last year, Eledon said it would prioritize its resources on kidney transplants. At that time, it said it was still “very enthusiastic” about its ALS testing and planned to continue to seek funding for another trial.
Last May, it completed financing of up to $185 million, which Eledon said should be sufficient to fund the company through its current Phase 2 Bestow trial.
On March 23, it announced the enrollment of the 12th participant in that trial, which assesses tegoprubart head-to-head with tacrolimus for the prevention of rejection in kidney transplantation. That 12th patient fulfilled a financing requirement from last year.
Kidney transplantation is the most common type of solid organ transplantation in the United States with an estimated 240,000 Americans living with a transplanted kidney. In 2019, an estimated 24,000 kidneys were transplanted, of which up to 15% were retransplants in persons that had already received at least one other kidney.
The company, which has 17 employees, has been able to attract talented executives. In 2022, it hired as vice president for technical operations John Herberger, who had served in a variety of industry positions including Thousand Oaks-based biopharmaceutical firm Amgen Inc.
Last November, Eledon hired Dr. Eliezer Katz as its chief medical officer. Katz spent two decades as a transplant surgeon and worked in a variety of positions in pharmaceutical research, including as senior director of transplantation with the Medicine Development Group at Pfizer Inc.
