Science

SK Channel – A Novel target for atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia, affecting millions worldwide and driving a major unmet need for safer, more effective therapies.

Our approach is built on a genetically validated target: SK channels, small-conductance Ca²⁺-activated potassium channels that play a key role in regulating the atrial heart rhythm.

Several studies have provided genetic validation of the SK channel target by showing strong associations between genes encoding the different subtypes of the channel and AF in humans. Specifically, small changes in the DNA that increase SK expression are strongly associated to AF in human genome wide association studies.

Ellinor et al, 2010, Ellinor et al, 2012, Christophersen et al, 2017.

Why SK Channel Inhibition Matters

Current atrial fibrillation treatments often fall short, with limited efficacy and significant safety concerns. By inhibiting SK channels, we aim to restore normal rhythm through a first-in-class mechanism that prolongs atrial refractoriness – a key marker of antiarrhythmic efficacy. This approach is designed to deliver meaningful clinical benefit while minimizing risks associated with conventional therapies.

Atria, cardiomyocyte (green), endothelial cells or collagen (yellow)

Safety is central to our innovation. Existing antiarrhythmic drugs are frequently associated with significant safety concerns, particularly the risk of proarrhythmia, which often necessitates comprehensive screening before prescription. Our key differentiator is improved safety by avoiding detrimental ventricular effects. A low risk of proarrhythmia  reduces the risk to patients and removes key barriers for clinicians when considering treatment options.

Translating Science into Impact

In a phase 2 trial, our 1st generation compound AP30663 demonstrated robust cardioversion of atrial fibrillation to sinus rhythm – the first clinical proof of concept for this novel mechanism. Read the publication here.

Rat atria or pulmonary vein, cardiomyocyte (purple), endothelial cells or collagen (yellow), cell nuclei (blue)

Atria, cardiomyocyte (purple), endothelial cells (yellow), cell nuclei (blue)

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Dr. Nils Edvardsson

Scientific Advisor

Nils Edvardsson is a clinical cardiologist and has worked as Chief cardiologist, arrhythmia section, at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. In addition to that he was a full-time advisor to AstraZeneca and has served as member of numerous advisory and steering commitees on anti-arrhythmic drugs.

Dr Edvardsson served as CMO in Acesion Pharma 2014-2020 and was responsible for the clinical development of Acesion’s drug candidate AP30663 for cardioversion of AF. Currently Nils Edvardsson is a Medical Advisor to Acesion on the company’s clinical development portfolio in AF treatment.

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Prof. Johannes Brachmann

Scientific Advisor

Dr Johannes Brachmann is a Director, REGIOMED Centrum for Cardiology and Angiology and Leader of the Medical Boards REGIOMED-KLINIKEN and Chief physician II at Clinic cardiology, angiology, pneumology.

Dr Brachmann received a Research fellowship of the German Research Foundation at the University of Oklahoma, USA From 1981 to 1988 he worked as Head of the clinical and experimental electrophysiological laboratory of the University of Heidelberg, attending cardiologist at the University of Heidelberg & Assistant Professor of Cardiology, Member of the scientific committees of the German Cardiac Society, The European Society of Cardiology, Member of the Nucleus of the Working Group ”Electrophysiology” of the German Cardiac Society. Deputy Chief of Cardiology, University of Heidelberg and Professor of Medicine. More than 400 peer-reviewed publications. Principal investigator or steering committee member in more than 50 multicenter trials on arrhythmias, interventional and structural heart therapies. Several board functions in national and international societies

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Prof. Harry Crijns

Scientific Advisor

Harry Crijns is em. professor of Cardiology at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM) of the Maastricht University, and past chair of Cardiology at the Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands. He is a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and served on the board of EHRA. He is also past Chair of the Netherlands Society of Cardiology and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Netherlands Heart Foundation. His primary research focus continues to be atrial fibrillation, in particular novel diagnostic pathways. He authored and co-authored over 700 articles in peer reviewed journals . He is deputy editor of the European Heart Journal (section arrhythmias).
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Prof. Gerald V. Naccarelli

Scientific Advisor

Gerald V. Naccarelli M.D. FACC, FAHA, FHRS is the Bernard Trabin Chair in Cardiology, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Cardiology at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa, USA. He has published over 700 peer review papers, book chapters, reviews and abstracts and is the author/co-author of 4 arrhythmia related books. Dr Naccarelli has been involved in the clinical development and approval of all the antiarrhythmic agents released in the USA over the last 40 years. He has been an active consultant to over 50 companies in medical industry and has served on the steering committee and Clinical Events Committees of multiple major clinical trials. He is currently on the editorial board of 12 scientific journals, Associate Editor of 2 journals and a past Associate Editor of Circulation.

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Prof. James A. Reiffel

Scientific Advisor

Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Special Lecturer, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons; and, Attending Physician [Emeritus] at Presbyterian Hospital in New York City; Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Section of Electrophysiology.
Dr. Reiffel has been actively involved in teaching, research, and clinical practice for over 4 decades. He has regularly instructed medical students, postgraduate house staff, fellows, and other faculty, and he has had an active practice in consultative clinical cardiology and cardiac arrhythmic disorders. During his career, Dr. Reiffel has served as Director of the Clinical Electrophysiology Laboratory and training program for electrophysiology fellows at the Columbia University-New York Presbyterian Medical Center and as Director of the Electrocardiography Laboratory at the same institution. Outside of Columbia, Dr. Reiffel has taught regionally, nationally, and internationally — having given over 1000 invited presentations at most major medical institutions in the country and at several lay programs as well and has been a guest on several regional and national medical and TV news programs and webcasts. He has received numerous honors for the quality of his teaching. He has also served on the editorial board of several medical journals and actively does peer-review for many more.

Dr. Reiffel has also served in advisory capacities re: the FDA and multiple pharmaceutical and medical device companies and has been on the planning committee for the Cardiac Safety Research Consortium. Regarding cardiac arrhythmias, Dr. Reiffel has been involved in developmental/research studies of electrophysiological techniques, antiarrhythmic pharmaceuticals and devices, new anticoagulants, and multiple major multicenter trials. He has lectured on these subjects and has also published and lectured on interpretation of clinical trial data and on improving patient understanding of their medications. Additionally, Dr. Reiffel has served as an arrhythmia consultant to the veterinary staff at SaveTheChimps.org.

Present research interests include the optimum management of patients with atrial fibrillation and flutter, development of new antiarrhythmic and antithrombotic pharmaceuticals, and the use of cardiac devices for arrhythmia detection. Dr. Reiffel is a member of the Steering Committee for both the CABANA trial and the ORBIT AF Registries, is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the recently completed REVEAL AF trial, and co-PI for the recently reported HARMONY trial. Dr. Reiffel is also on the Steering Committee of the HEARTLINE trial, which will begin the enrollment of over 150,000 subjects in February 2020. Currently, Dr. Reiffel also serves on the Board of Directors of the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, FL.
In concert with the above, Dr. Reiffel has been first author, senior author, or co-author of approximately 500 medical publications. In addition to the above, Dr. Reiffel has published one golf book (RELOAD—the Rules for Mulligan Golf) and two children’s books (illustrated by his four grandchildren: My Goose Got Loose, and Once Upon an Antigmule) and has contributed chapters to the golf book: Playing Without Pain—Medical Advice to golfers Over 50.

Advancing medical science; educating patients, lay persons, and other educators themselves; and improving the lives of others has been a greatly rewarding career for the past half century.

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Ben Thorner

Director

Ben Thorner serves as General Counsel & Chief Business Officer of Eikon Therapeutics, and as such oversees all legal matters and dealmaking for the Company.

Prior to assuming this position, Ben served as Senior Vice President and Head of BD&L for Merck Research Laboratories. In that role, Ben supervised all dealmaking activities that contributed to the pipeline, which included discovery, technologies, preclinical and clinical stage deals as well as the MRL Ventures Fund.

Ben went to Merck from Novartis, where he served as Head of Transactions, Strategic Alliances at NIBR. In that role, he led a team of deal negotiators responsible for pre-PoC deals for Novartis’ therapeutics pipeline. Prior to Novartis, Ben held positions of increasing responsibility with Amgen in their legal and licensing organizations.

Prior to his industry career, Ben worked in private law practice providing counsel on strategic intellectual property issues, licensing agreements, strategic alliances, and other corporate transactions, with a focus on biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients. In addition, he served as clerk to the Honorable Randall R. Rader, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He holds a J.D. and M.A. (Biology) from the University of Virginia, and a B.A. from George Mason University. Ben previously served on the Board of the California Life Sciences Association and was granted membership in the following Bar Associations: New York, Colorado and Virginia and currently is Registered In House Counsel in California.

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Tim Shannon

Director

Dr. Shannon is a General Partner at Canaan Partners, which he joined in 2009. He has made investments in and serves or has served on the private and public boards of several Canaan portfolio companies.

Previously, Dr. Shannon was President and Chief Executive Officer of CuraGen, a public biopharmaceutical company focused on oncology. He also held positions of increasing responsibility for Bayer’s Pharmaceutical Business Group, including Senior Vice President of Global Medical Development. Prior to his career in industry, he was an Assistant Professor in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at Yale University School of Medicine.

Dr. Shannon received his B.A. in Chemistry from Amherst College, his medical degree from the University of Connecticut, and completed his postgraduate medical training in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital of Harvard Medical School and Boston University, respectively.

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Nik Economopoulos

Director

Nik Economopoulos, MBBS, MBA, serves as Analyst at Alpha Wave Global LP with a focus on private biotech and medtech financings. Nik has over 8 years experience in business development, corporate strategy, M&A and investing in the biopharma sector. Prior to joining Alpha Wave, Nik was part of the Venture Investments team at Novo Holdings and a consultant at L.E.K. Consulting. Nik holds a medical degree from University College London and an MBA from London Business School.
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Jørgen Søberg Petersen

Chairman of the Board

Jørgen Søberg Petersen spent the first 9 years of his career in clinical and academic medicine in Denmark and in the United States. During his 20 years tenure in the pharmaceutical industry, Jørgen served in executive R&D roles at Lundbeck, Merck, and Novo Nordisk. Jørgen was co-founder of Zealand Pharma, and as CSO he played a key role in building this company to exit. Along his assignments in big pharma, Jørgen has been closely involved in multiple alliances between biotech and pharma and he has served on the board of multiple successful biotech companies. Jørgen joined Novo Holdings in 2017 where he currently serves as Senior Partner.
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Torgeir Vaage

CFO

Torgeir Vaage has extensive experience from the financial industry in Norway. Prior to joining Initiator Pharma he worked as a financial analyst with several Scandinavian investment banks, including ABG Sundal Collier, Handelsbanken Markets, Norden Equity and has been involved in a number of early stage biopharma companies. He holds a MSc from Norges Handelshøyskole (Norway) and a PhD from UC Berkeley.
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Morten Grunnet

SCO & Co-founder

Morten Grunnet, PhD, DrSc, is co-founder, board member and CSO at Acesion Pharma. He brings +15 years of drug discovery experience at director level from both biotech and big pharma. His entire research career has been focused on drug development, which has led to managing projects covering early-stage discovery to mature full scale projects encompassing up to 30 project members. Some of these projects have been strategic collaborations between biotech and big pharma companies. His solid academic background has led to +140 publications in high impact journals, as well as 4 years at the University of Copenhagen as a full professor and currently as Honorary Professor. He is an expert within ion channels in excitable tissue and has led cross-disciplinary teams for several pre-clinical drug discovery projects within CNS and the cardiovascular field.
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Ulrik Sørensen

COO & Co-founder

Biotech entrepreneur with extensive R&D and executive management experience. Co-founder and founding CEO of Acesion Pharma, leading the company from 2011-2016 in the building of Acesion as well as raising of seeding and Series A funding from Danish and international investors. Ulrik Sørensen has a scientific background as PhD in Medicinal chemistry and led, at the Danish biotech NeuroSearch, the SK channel inhibitor program that formed the basis for Acesion. At Acesion he has in addition to executive management roles directed the company’s lead optimization campaigns from discovery to clinical development candidates. Chairman of the Steering Group of the second Wellcome Trust (Translational Award) program directed to take Acesion’s first clinical candidate AP30663 into Phase 2 human clinical proof-of-concept.
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Anders Gaarsdal Holst

CEO & CMO

Anders Gaarsdal Holst, MD, PhD has a clinical and academic research background within cardiology with a focus on the epidemiology and genetics of arrhythmia. In the period 2013-2020 he worked at Novo Nordisk, latest as lead for cardiovascular clinical development across the portfolio of projects. In the position he was medically and scientifically responsible for leading both large cardiovascular outcomes trials as well as early stage clinical activities within the cardiovascular area. He has substantial experience in interacting with the FDA, EMA and other major regulatory authorities as well as with some of the world’s leading academic experts on steering committees and advisory boards. He has published more than 100 publications, many of them in leading journals. He joined Acesion in 2020 as CMO and was appointed CEO in June 2022.

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Prof. Jeremy Ruskin

Scientific Advisor

Dr. Jeremy Ruskin is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Founder and Director Emeritus of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service and Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship Training Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Ruskin received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1971. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston from 1971-1973. Dr. Ruskin completed a research fellowship in clinical cardiac electrophysiology at the USPHS Hospital in Staten Island, New York from 1973-75 under the mentorship of Dr. Anthony Damato, the father of modern clinical cardiac electrophysiology. He was then recruited by Dr. Edgar Haber to MGH where he completed a clinical and research fellowship in cardiovascular disease from 1975-1978 and joined the MGH faculty in 1978.

Dr. Ruskin founded the MGH Cardiac Arrhythmia Service and Clinical Electrophysiology Laboratory in 1978, the first subspecialty service dedicated to the care of patients with cardiac arrhythmias in New England and one of the first in the United States. He served as director for 38 years during which time the MGH Cardiac Arrhythmia Service grew into one of the leading clinical and academic programs in the country. In 1978, Dr. Ruskin also founded the MGH Fellowship Training Program in Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology, one of the first subspecialty training programs of its type in the US. During his 40-year tenure as director of the MGH EP training program from 1978-2018, Dr. Ruskin was responsible for the training and mentorship of more than 150 clinical and research fellows in the subspecialty of cardiac arrhythmias and electrophysiology, many of whom hold senior leadership positions at academic centers throughout the world.

Dr. Ruskin is an author of more than 500 original scientific publications, chapters, reviews, guidelines and monographs. His research has focused on mechanisms and prevention of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in experimental models and patients, risk stratification for sudden death, the role of arrhythmia control devices in the prevention of sudden cardiac death, the proarrhythmic effects of cardiac and non-cardiac drugs, cardiac safety issues in new drug and device development, the use of novel biocompatible hydrogels for myocardial preservation and sustained delivery of therapeutic agents to the myocardium, brain-heart interactions in patients with cardiac arrhythmias, and new antiarrhythmic drugs and innovative technologies for catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation.

Dr. Ruskin served as a member of the FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee for 5 years and as a consultant to the National Center for Health Services Research and Health Care Technology Assessment. For the past 30 years, he has worked extensively on the scientific and regulatory aspects of medical device and drug development as well as cardiac safety of noncardiac drugs. He also maintains an active regional, national, and international referral practice in the field of cardiac arrhythmias and electrophysiology and is recognized annually in Best Doctors in America and Best Doctors in Boston.

In 1995, Dr. Ruskin founded the Annual International Atrial Fibrillation Symposium which he has directed since its inception and is the largest and longest running free-standing academic meeting on atrial fibrillation worldwide, now entering its 28th year. Dr. Ruskin is the recipient of the 1997 Michel Mirowski Award for Excellence in Clinical Cardiology and Electrophysiology, the 2002 Heart Rhythm Society Pioneer in Pacing and Electrophysiology Award and the 2015 KCHRS Pioneer in Electrophysiology Award. He was named the inaugural incumbent of the Omran Alomran Endowed Chair in Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2016. In 2017, the Jeremy Ruskin and Dan Starks Endowed Chair in Cardiology was established at MGH in recognition of Dr. Ruskin’s pioneering contributions to the field of clinical cardiac electrophysiology.

In 2018, Dr. Ruskin received the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award at Harvard Medical School in recognition of four decades of service to the training and career development of fellows and faculty in the field of cardiac electrophysiology. In 2022, Dr. Ruskin received the Heart Rhythm Society’s international Distinguished Teacher Award.

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Prof. A. John Camm

Scientific Advisor

Professor Camm is the British Heart Foundation emeritus professor of Clinical Cardiology at St. George’s University of London.

Professor Camm has a broad range of professional interests. His major specialty is cardiac arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation and thromboembolism.

Professor Camm has given over 2000 lectures to national and international audiences, written more than 1450 peer review papers and over 350 book chapters. He has authored (5) and edited (30) books. He is currently editor in chief of Clinical Cardiology, the European Heart Journal – Case Reports and ESC CardioMed.

Professor Camm is a Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians (London and Edinburgh and Glasgow). He a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the Heart Rhythm Society (USA), the European Society of Cardiology, the European Heart Rhythm Association and the British Heart Rhythm Society.

Professor Camm has been awarded the Gold Medal of the European Society of Cardiology and the Mackenzie Medal of the British Cardiovascular Society.

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Prof. Peter R. Kowey

Scientific Advisor

Peter R. Kowey, MD, is a graduate of St Joseph’s University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Penn State University and was a Fellow in cardiovascular medicine and research at the Harvard University School of Public Health, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and the West Roxbury VA Hospital. After this training he joined the faculty at the Medical College of Pennsylvania as Director of the CCU and Arrhythmia Program, and rose to the rank of full Professor. He went on to become Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at the Lankenau Hospital, the Main Line Health System and President of the Main Line Health Heart Center, posts held from 1990-2016. Dr. Kowey currently is the William Wikoff Smith Chair in Cardiovascular Research. He is also Professor of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology at Jefferson Medical College.