MedTech CardiaTec has secured £5 million in seed funding to decode the biology behind cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally, with an average of 17.9 million lives lost every year. Despite its prevalence, therapeutic innovation in this area has stagnated, largely due to a limited comprehension of the disease’s underlying biology.
This gap in understanding has resulted in poor translation of large and expensive clinical trials, leaving a significant unmet need for more effective treatments.
Computational approaches have massive potential in drug target discovery due to their ability to aggregate and analyse vast amounts of data which humans can’t process.
CardiaTec leverages large multi-omics human data to better navigate complex cardiovascular disease biology and identify novel, more targeted therapeutics. To achieve this, it has established a network of 65 hospitals across the US and the UK to support the bespoke collection of human hearts for data generation.
The company is building the first and largest human heart tissue-multi-omics dataset.
The round was led by Montage Ventures, with participation from Continuum Health Ventures and existing investors including Laidlaw Ventures and APEX Ventures. Industry leaders Dr Maximilien Levesque (CEO and co-founder of Aqemia) and Naheed Kurji (former president of Recursion and CEO and founder of Cyclica) joined as individual investors.
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The new funds will allow CardiaTec to expand its platform and progress proprietary drug targets to the preclinical stage.
Dr Joseph Lehár, former SVP of R&D strategy at pioneering BioTech Owkin, has also joined CardiaTec’s scientific advisory board.
CardiaTec is a spinout from the Han Lab at the University of Cambridge, founded in 2021 by Prof Namshik Han (CTO) and two alumni, Raphael Peralta (CEO) and Thelma Zablocki (COO), who have been awarded Forbes 30 under 30 Europe status.
Drawing on research conducted over the last decade, the company has brought together industry experts from leading organisations, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Cleveland Clinic and Recursion Pharmaceuticals.
“Modelling complex cardiovascular disease biology across multiple omic dimensions has immense potential in unlocking new therapeutic strategies that will challenge the current standard of care,” said Peralta.
“Over the last several years, I am proud of the team’s relentless drive to reach important milestones and our collective ambition to tackle a tough global problem. I look forward to working with our investors to accelerate our development.”
Todd Kimmel, partner at Montage Ventures, stated: “CardiaTec is at the forefront of a new era in cardiovascular drug discovery. Their unique combination of the world’s largest multi-omics dataset from human cardiac tissues and advanced computational technology positions them to uncover novel drug targets for the world’s leading cause of death.
“With strong pharma industry connections, a growing market need, and a proprietary data moat, CardiaTec has the potential to revolutionise how we approach and treat cardiovascular diseases.”