Thursday, May 9, 2024

Stealth BioTherapeutics’ SBT-589 Shows Cardioprotective Effects in Preclinical Models of Friedreich Ataxia

May 3, 2024. New data on SBT-589 (Stealth BioTherapeutics) presented at the 2024 Wellcome Trust Conference on Mitochondrial Medicine – Therapeutic Development, held March 18-20, in Cambridge, England, demonstrated cardioprotective effects across preclinical models of Friedreich ataxia (FA).1,2 These findings support further development of SBT-589, a novel molecule that can act on mitochondrial pathways that are impaired, and suggest the compound could be a disease-modifying therapy in FA cardiomyopathy. 
Our major finding was that the novel compound, SBT-589, improved metrics of adverse cardiac growth (hypertrophy) in a highly aggressive mouse model of FA cardiomyopathy. Transgenic FA mice showed increased left ventricular mass (normalized to body weight) and increased left ventricular wall thickness compared with control mice. We found that 3 weeks of daily SBT-589 treatment prevented cardiac hypertrophy