 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 12, 2020 GLOBE NEWSWIRE -- Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. NASDAQ: AGIO, a leader in the field of cellular metabolism to treat cancer and rare genetic diseases, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA has granted orphan drug designation to the companys first-in-class pyruvate kinase R PKR activator mitapivat for the treatment of patients with sickle cell disease. Mitapivat is an investigational, oral, small molecule allosteric activator of wild-type and a variety of mutated PKR enzymes. 