RELEASE DATE: October 12, 2023

Yaso Therapeutics Inc. announces FDA authorization for first-in-human clinical trials of polymer drug PPCM for preventing unplanned pregnancy.

Yaso Therapeutics Inc, (Frisco, TX) today announced that the FDA has authorized its IND application for first-in-human clinical trials of the company’s platform drug, polyphenylene carboxymethylene sodium salt (PPCM).

“I am excited to announce that we have reached this critical milestone in development of our first multipurpose drug product to protect women,” stated Mary Weitzel, President and CEO of Yaso Therapeutics. “Our vaginal gel with PPCM is a promising non-hormonal contraceptive, and we believe our planned clinical trials will show that millions of women may use it for family planning as well as disease prevention. It is formulated to be pleasant to use and has demonstrated a favorable preclinical profile. This wonderful result is due to the hard work of the Yaso team as well as many consultants, CROs and academic researchers who labored to get us to this point.”

PPCM is a small non-sulfated polyanion attachment, fusion and entry inhibitor. It is a multi-purpose drug, which may be able to prevent infection by certain pathogens such as Neisseria gonorrhoeae and HSV-2. It is in active development for vaginal applications to prevent sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy and promises to be useful in other topical applications.

We gratefully acknowledge the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for awarding us the following small business grants that funded the work to take the drug from benchtop to first-in-human clinical trials including: National Institute of Allergy and Immunology (NIAID) grants R43AI069659, R44AI084225 and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grants R44HD092206, R43HD109101.