Juvena Therapeutics Awarded Highly Competitive CIRM Grant To Advance Lead Program, JUV-161, To Treat Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Juvena Therapeutics, a biopharma company whose computationally driven platform discovers and develops stem cell derived protein therapeutics for chronic and rare debilitating diseases, today announced that the company has been awarded a highly competitive translational grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), totaling $3,906,376.

The grant will fund the advancement of Juvena's lead program, fusion protein therapeutic JUV-161, for the treatment of the rare muscle-wasting disease, DM1, through initial IND-enabling studies and a pre-IND FDA meeting in the next 12-16 months.

Juvena will be positioned to secure a second CIRM grant to fund JUV-161, and subsequently an anticipated FDA approval, after completion of the designated criteria in TRAN I.

"We are thrilled and honored to have received this important grant to accelerate our research and the development of a treatment for patients suffering from Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1, a rare, genetic, progressive muscle disease, which can affect a person's mobility, cognition, and heart function," said Hanadie Yousef, Ph.D., Juvena Therapeutics' CEO and co-founder.

"The entire Juvena team is thankful for the advisors, foundations, CROs, and investors who supported us during the application process, as well as the panel of 12 reviewers who unanimously voted to award Juvena the funds to advance this potentially life-saving treatment," said Yousef.

Additionally, Juvena is announcing that the company is applying for a Phase II NIH SBIR grant in 2022 to support the preclinical translation of JUV-161. The application process will follow completion of the milestones in the Phase I $254,262 grant that the company was awarded in August 2021.

Juvena is also raising a Series A financing round to advance the platform and expand the pipeline of biologics to multiple therapeutic areas.

About Juvena Therapeutics

Juvena Therapeutics is a computationally driven biopharma startup discovering and developing biologics for rare and chronic degenerative diseases by mining the secretomes of human pluripotent stem cells through a machine learning (ML)-enhanced platform. Juvena's platform integrates proteomics, transcriptomics and images with phenotypic human in vitro disease model screening and extensive preclinical validation to build a map of secreted proteins in a compounding database linking therapeutic proteins to disease indications.

SOURCE Juvena Therapeutics