Acceleron Pharma's ACE-536 stimulates red blood cell production through novel mechanism

Dec 8 2009

Acceleron Pharma, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics that modulate the growth of cells and tissues including red blood cells, bone, muscle, fat, and the vasculature, presented data demonstrating that ACE-536 promotes formation of red blood cells through inhibition of members of the TGF-beta superfamily, at the 51^st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

“This discovery is a paradigm shift in our understanding of the red blood cell growth and differentiation process,” said Jasbir Seehra, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Acceleron Pharma. “For the last 30 years, the treatment of anemia has been limited to iron supplementation and recombinant erythropoietin (EPO). We have shown that ACE-536 stimulates red blood cell production through an entirely unique mechanism.”

The study findings demonstrate that administration of ACE-536 promotes rapid, dose-dependent increases of hemoglobin, hematocrit, and red blood cells in several animal species. In addition, treatment with ACE-536 corrects anemia in animal models of chronic kidney disease and acute blood loss. The studies also show that ACE-536 promotes red blood formation in the absence of EPO signaling, through an independent pathway. Moreover, ACE-536 has distinct effects from EPO on red blood cell differentiation, and acts on a different population of progenitor blood cells during a later phase of red blood cell development.

SOURCE Acceleron