Fractyl Health, Inc. announced an oral presentation of new preclinical data from its Rejuva smart GLP-1 gene therapy platform at the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) 2025 Annual Meeting. The data highlight RJVA-001’s potential to deliver durable, nutrient-responsive GLP-1 secretion from pancreatic beta cells–mimicking natural hormone regulation with low circulating levels of GLP-1, offering a potentially profound mechanical advantage over pharmacologic GLP-1 drugs. RJVA-001 also showed strong efficacy, targeted delivery, and a favorable safety profile, reinforcing its readiness for first-in-human studies.
The data were featured in an oral presentation at ASGCT titled “Endoscopic Ultrasound-Guided Delivery of Human Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Pancreatic Gene Therapy: Safety and Feasibility in a Porcine Model.” Key Data Presented at ASGCT 2025: Single-dose RJVA-001 led to durable, dose-dependent metabolic improvements in a well-established diabetic model: In db/db mice, treatment with RJVA-001 led to sustained reductions in blood sugar, improved fasting insulin levels, and improvements in body weight over six weeks– supporting Rejuva’s potential for sustained disease modification on both blood sugar and body weight control. Treatment with RJVA-001 resulted in a >200 mg/dL reduction in fasting blood sugar, a >2-fold increase in fasting insulin levels, and prevention of weight gain, compared to a 20% increase seen in vehicle-treated controls. These results demonstrate broad-based metabolic improvement in insulin secretion, weight gain, and blood sugar control in this gold-standard model of T2D.
RJVA-001 achieved glycemic control and prevented weight gain with significantly lower systemic GLP-1 exposure than required by GLP-1 drugs to achieve similar effects: Circulating GLP-1 levels were more than 5-fold lower than those seen with pharmacologic GLP-1 drug and were comparable to levels observed after gastric bypass surgery– suggesting a substantially lower risk of GLP-1-related side effects such as nausea and vomiting. In db/db mice, circulating levels of active GLP-1 were 10-20 pM with RJVA-001, compared to 50-150 pM typically reported with pharmacologic GLP- 1 drugs1. Data show nutrient- and dose-responsive GLP-1Sec in transduced human beta cells and islets, demonstrating that Rejuva mimics native hormone regulation rather than constant drug-driven stimulation: RJVA-001 activated glucose-dependent expression of GLP-1 in both in vitro and ex vivo models, consistent with physiologic endocrine function.
