CardiaTec’s $6.5m seed fund will boost cardiovascular research
Techbio company CardiaTec Biosciences, which has begun decoding the biology behind cardiovascular disease, has completed a $6.5million seed fund raise led by Montage Ventures with additional participation from Continuum Health Ventures and existing investors.
Based at 9 Hills Road, CardiaTec is decoding heart disease using high-dimensional human multi-omics data to navigate complex disease biology better and identify novel and differentiated therapeutics.
CardiaTec is a spin-out 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 both been awarded Forbes 30 under 30 Europe recognition.
Peralta and Zablocki are graduates of the University of Cambridge MPhil in bioscience enterprise programme. Han is a world-leading academic in AI applications for target and drug discovery who holds positions at the Milner Therapeutics Institute and the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine.
The team has been able to make significant progress in a short period of time because, although cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally – with 17.9 million lives lost annually – therapeutic innovation has stagnated 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, ultimately pushing investment and subsequent innovation away from the field, 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 (such as that derived from the genome, proteome, epigenome, and transcriptome, known as multi-omics 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, CardiaTec 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.
Raphael Peralta, CEO and co-founder of CardiaTec, said: “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.
“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, said: “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.”
