Provasculon Technology

First-in-class regenerative therapy

Provasculon was founded to exploit the discovery by Richard Lee, MD, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Vincent Segers, MD, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, of novel forms of the growth factor Stromal Cell-Derived Factor-1 (SDF-1).  SDF-1 is a well characterized chemokine that attracts stem cells to sites of vascular injury; these stem cells then promote repair and regeneration through a cascade of events that attenuate cell death, enable re-vascularization of damaged tissue, and prevent the undesirable remodeling that can impair the normal function of tissues. Provasculon’s lead development  candidate PRV-0023  promotes vascular repair and markedly improves normal tissue function in animal models of both myocardial infarction and peripheral vascular disease. Because it promotes repair of cardiovascular tissue and restoration of function, PRV-0023 has the potential to be a breakthrough therapy in chronic cardiovascular diseases including Myocardial Infarction, Chronic Heart Failure, and Peripheral Vascular Diseases.

The ease and simplicity of a protein product

A protein product is an attractive alternative to stem cell therapy; however, the potential for therapeutic use of SDF-1 is limited due to degradation by enzymes present in injured tissues that rapidly inactivate the SDF-1 protein. Provasculon’s molecules are proprietary analogues of SDF-1 that are resistant to activation by enzyme in injured tissues, yet retain the ability to attract repair-promoting stem cells.  Unlike stem cell and gene/plasmid‐based regenerative therapies, PVR‐0023 does not require any complex cell isolation and enrichment procedures and does not rely on difficult‐to‐control transduction of viral or plasmid derived genes.  In contrast, PRV-0023 is delivered in a standard solution by intracoronary or intravenous injection. Furthermore, while stem cell and gene therapies are still nascent technologies, the manufacture of recombinant proteins is a mature science, providing Provasculon protein therapeutics with a well-understood regulatory path in development.