Improving the Lives of People with COPD

Our goal:

Disrupt the COPD treatment paradigm by targeting the upstream cause of acute respiratory exacerbations – not accept the status quo of managing the long term downstream consequences like chronic inflammation, hospitalizations and even death.

Vapendavir is an oral medicine being developed by Altesa BioSciences.

In a recent clinical trial on people with Stage 2 COPD and experimental rhinovirus infection, vapendavir improved symptoms, reduced viral load, and maintained lung function.

Altesa is an innovative, clinical-stage pharmaceutical company dedicated to preventing and treating the leading cause of COPD and asthma exacerbations – namely viral respiratory infections – starting with rhinovirus, the most common respiratory virus on the planet.

Over 17 million Americans and nearly 500 million people globally suffer with COPD, robbing patients of breath, limiting daily activities, and leading to fear of being with their family and friends due to the risk of potentially catastrophic respiratory virus infections.

Moreover, COPD costs the US about $60 billion annually in health care spending.

Nearly 50% of COPD exacerbations are caused by the common cold virus – rhinovirus.  When a COPD patient “catches cold,” rhinovirus invades the lungs, often tipping these fragile patients over the ledge into an acute, life threatening, crisis.

Our focus at Altesa BioSciences is to continue developing a safe and effective oral medicine to treat rhinovirus infections BEFORE they can harm people living with COPD – it’s that simple.

Empowering Patients to Take Charge
of their Health

People with COPD and asthma know when they are coming down with a respiratory virus infection. Today there are even wearable devices that can help warn you, even before you realize it, that you may be coming down with an illness. Altesa’s mission is to equip patients with safe, effective, simple oral antiviral medicines so that people can treat their respiratory infections at their earliest stages before they become serious. New point-of-care and home tests that inform patients about the exact viral cause of their illness will help us achieve this mission even faster.

The result – safe and effective early treatment of the right person, with the right medicine, at the right time.

What Altesa is doing for rhinoviruses has been proven effective for other viruses, like flu and COVID-19. Both diseases can be effectively treated with simple pills if diagnosed early.  We aim to do the same for the most common viral infection on the planet.

The Right People

When a person with COPD is infected by rhinovirus, the first symptoms are typically those of a common cold.

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The Right Treatment

Although there is currently no way to reverse the chronic lung changes of COPD, patients can live productively and happily…

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Dr. Sebastian Johnson, Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London

My number one priority is to improve patients’ lives and empower them to live freely and fully.

To accomplish this, it seems obvious that we should identify and treat viral infections early, instead of attempting to rescue breathless patients after the fact.  Killing the virus also makes more sense than requiring patients to receive monthly immune modifying injections that help a minority of patients only by lessening the body’s self-destructive response to the virus.

Brett Giroir, MD
Chief Executive Officer, Altesa BioSciences
Former US Assistant Secretary for Health and Acting FDA Commissioner
and Admiral, US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Vapendavir

Vapendavir is a member of the drug class called capsid inhibitors, the same class of drug as Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year — a different capsid inhibitor that works against HIV/AIDS.

Vapendavir has a potent antiviral effect against 97% of rhinoviruses that infect humans, as well as other respiratory enteroviruses.  To date, over 700 healthy volunteers, asthma patients, or COPD patients have already taken vapendavir as part of clinical trials.  Altesa is now advancing vapendavir into the later stages of clinical development.

Altesa holds the exclusive global rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize vapendavir.

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