REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Ashvattha Therapeutics, a clinical stage biotech company focused on novel hydroxyl dendrimer therapeutics (HDTs) targeting unmet medical needs in neurology, neuro-oncology, and ophthalmology, today announced it will present two oral presentations at the virtual World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC), on October 5-8, 2021.

Details of the oral presentations are as follows:

Date/Time: Tuesday, October 5^th, 1:17 – 1:28 PM ET
Presentation Title: Development of ¹⁸F-OP-801: a novel hydroxyl dendrimer PET tracer for imaging maladaptive inflammation in the whole body and brain
Presenter: Mackenzie Carlson, NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine

Date/Time: Friday, October 8, 2:44 PM – 2:55 PM ET
Presentation Title: Development of a novel hydroxyl dendrimer SPECT tracer, ¹¹¹In-D6-B483, for selective imaging of brain tumors
Presenter: Jeffrey Cleland, Ph.D., Chairman, CEO and President, Ashvattha Therapeutics

¹⁸F-OP-801 is a neuroimaging agent to diagnose patients with neuroinflammation due to Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases. ¹⁸F-OP-801 is being developed as a companion diagnostic and also a pharmacodynamic tool for therapeutics to treat neuroinflammation. The company plans to initiate a Phase 1/2 study in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients of ¹⁸F-OP-801 in combination with OP-101 in early 2022 and expects to report imaging data in second half of 2022.

“Currently available imaging agents to detect neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases have many limitations, including a lack of specificity. This makes it difficult to learn about the roles of specific inflammatory cells in these diseases, and hinders our ability to monitor new treatments that modulate the immune response,” said Michelle James, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Radiology and Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine. “¹⁸F-OP-801 offers a number of advantages. We’re really looking forward to driving the preclinical imaging research for this dendrimer and hope the results will lead to both a diagnostic and a therapeutic to modify Alzheimer’s, an area of significant unmet medical need.”

“We are excited to present preclinical imaging research that will enable us to directly quantitate the extent of HD uptake in patients before treating them with our HD therapeutics,” said Jeffrey Cleland, Ph.D., Chairman, CEO & President at Ashvattha Therapeutics. “In our first clinical study with ¹⁸F-OP-801, we plan to image the neuroinflammation in the motor cortex of ALS patients and then treat these ALS patients with OP-101 to evaluate the ability to reduce neuroinflammation as measured by a reduction in the subsequent PET signal from a second administration of ¹⁸F-OP-801. OP-101 provided a statistically significant reduction in neurofilament light chain, a biomarker of neuroinflammation, compared to placebo in a recently completed Phase 2 study in severe COVID-19 patients. The results of the planned imaging and treatment study in ALS patients will demonstrate the potential of our disease-cell targeted precision medicine approach in neurological disease.”

About Ashvattha Therapeutics

Ashvattha Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, is developing novel therapeutics that target and alter specific cells in areas of diseased tissues. The Company’s targeted platform technology, hydroxyl dendrimers (HD), is exclusively licensed from Johns Hopkins University. HDs chemically conjugated to disease modifying drugs create novel proprietary HD therapeutics (HDTs). Ashvattha has initiated multiple programs with HDTs focused on neurology, ocular neovascular disease including neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME), neuro-oncology, and hyperinflammation in diseases such as COVID-19. For more information, visit: www.avttx.com.

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