Our Company

We are passionate about developing novel therapies for patients with serious metabolic diseases that lack effective treatment options.

Akero is a clinical-stage company founded to develop transformational treatments for patients with serious metabolic diseases marked by high unmet medical need.

We began with an engineered protein called efruxifermin (EFX), which we licensed from Amgen and are developing for treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH is a serious liver disease caused by metabolic dysregulation that does not have any approved therapies. EFX is a differentiated Fc-FGF21 fusion protein that has been engineered to mimic the balanced biological activity of native FGF21, an endogenous hormone that alleviates cellular stress and regulates metabolism throughout the body.

“Where we’re able to develop a compound that can treat the person as a whole. That’s the holy grail, and that’s the target of what we’re trying to do in drug development for NASH.”

–Stephen Harrison, M.D.
Medical Director, Pinnacle Clinical Research

BALANCED. HARMONY. SYMMETRY. SYNCHRONY. These names define our clinical trials because we believe restoring whole-body metabolic balance is the key to addressing metabolic dysregulation—and because we believe EFX is ideally suited for this challenge.

We believe our clinical trial data, which include some of the largest and most consistent effects reported to date in the NASH space, position EFX to be a potentially best-in-class treatment, if approved, for NASH.

Our corporate headquarters is located in South San Francisco, California, but our employees are spread throughout the country. We believe in hiring the best talent and recognize that great work doesn’t depend on reporting daily to a central office.

We have achieved a number of milestones in our quest to bring novel therapies to patients.

We have achieved a number of milestones in our quest to bring novel therapies to patients.