Abiopharma

GENPREX, INC. (GNPX) Announces Clinical Trial Update GENPREX, INC. (GNPX) provided an update on its clinical development programs. Clinical Development Highlights:

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  • targeting) or the rat insulin promoter (“RIP”) (β-cell–specific targeting) or received a control virus. The diet remained unchanged after surgery. At two and/or four weeks after surgery, researchers performed intraperitoneal glucose tolerance testing, insulin tolerance testing, glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (“GSIS”), calculated HOMA-IR and assessed glucagon secretion. Mice were then euthanized for pancreatic histology, quantification of β- and α-cell mass, electron microscopy (“EM”), and islets were isolated for ex-vivo glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and single-cell RNA sequencing. The results at four weeks showed major improvements in the control of diabetes. At four weeks after surgery, ex-vivo GSIS showed that islets isolated from HFD+CMV-PM-GFP treated mice had insulin secretion similar to islets from RD mice, and both groups had increased insulin secretion compared to islets from the control HFD groups, indicating improved β-cell function with PM treatment. Similarly, and importantly, treatment of HFD mice with RIP-PM-GFP, which selectively targets β-cells, reversed hyperglycemia and improved ex-vivo GSIS. In addition, EM imaging showed that PM treatment in HFD mice increased the number of total and mature insulin granules and decreased the number of immature insulin granules compared with HFD controls. Furthermore, transcriptomic pseudotime analysis demonstrated a shift in β-cells from an immature state toward a more mature state after PM treatment. The press release noted that PM gene therapy reverses hyperglycemia, likely in large part by specifically enhancing β-cell function and maturation. This approach is technically translatable to humans using endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography to deliver PM gene therapy to the pancreas. The press release concluded that the compelling evidence from the preclinical studies, which achieved complete rescue of HFD-induced hyperglycemia at four weeks post-treatment via direct intrapancreatic infusion, suggests the technical translatability of the Company’s diabetes gene therapy approach to human application, potentially through endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, offering a potentially promising avenue for long-term glycemic control in T2D. Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements Statements contained in this Current Report on Form 8-K regarding matters that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995