Cambridge-based biotech startup CardiaTech has raised €5.8 million in its seed funding round. The funding will fuel the development of their computational platform to address cardiovascular diseases (CVD), the leading cause of death in the world. This investment boosts confidence in AI solutions to solve health problems that may otherwise be difficult to address in traditional ways.
image Source: Cardiatech
Financing Details
Seed funding of €5.8 million was raised from Montage Ventures, Continuum Health Ventures, Laidlaw Ventures, Apex Ventures and a number of angel investors. This investment will help CardiaTech expand its data acquisition, provide a means to validate therapeutic targets in the wet lab arm, and build out its team in Cambridge.
Diseases and solutions
Cardiovascular diseases account for 17.9 million deaths worldwide and ISH is one of the leading causes of death. Traditional drug discovery approaches have not been effective and efficient in tackling such diseases as claimed in the manuscript due to the following reasons.
According to the information provided, the average cost of the process called drug development and bringing a drug to market is estimated to be around $2.2 billion, and the failure rate is around 90%. This inefficiency underlines the need for new solutions.
CardiaTech's software works independently of hardware and is based on complex computational algorithms that process large amounts of biological data. It enables advanced knowledge of heart disease biology by integrating genomics, proteomics, epigenomics, and transcriptomics. This idea of employing multiple omics layers offers the feasibility of discovering new drug targets that may be missed in conventional analysis.
The startup has partnered with 65 hospitals based in the U.K. and U.S. that receive human heart tissue. This collaboration has led to the creation of the largest human heart tissue multi-omics database in the world. In this way, CardiaTech hopes to identify previously unknown causes of cardiac diseases and create specific treatments for them.
Integration of AI in drug discovery
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology plays a key role in CardiaTech's platform. AI algorithms analyze and make sense of large amounts of biological data that are too difficult for humans to handle. This capability enables researchers to predict how different chemical compounds will bind to certain targets in the human body, which speeds up the identification of powerful drug leads.
CardiaTech's CTO Namshik Han is a lecturer in AI in drug discovery at the University of Cambridge and head of AI at the Milner Therapeutics Institute. He has used his knowledge in machine learning and computational biology to guide the development of the AI aspect of the platform.
Success and achievements
AI has the potential to revolutionize industries and CardiaTech is an example of the impact of AI in the biotech industry. This startup is helping to tackle some of the issues in drug discovery, allowing for the development of better treatments for cardiovascular diseases. AI and multi-omics data create a new trend for researchers to address complex health issues.
The startup's journey to success also underlines the need for synergy between academic institutions and corporate giants. CardiaTech's origins at the University of Cambridge and its collaboration with hospitals demonstrate how the academic approach must work alongside its implementation. This synergy is imperative for optimising innovation and the application of science to solutions.
conclusion
The 5.8 million euro seed funding is a significant milestone for CardiaTech, but also for the cardiovascular drug discovery industry in general. The combination of AI and multi-omics data puts CardiaTech in a unique position to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. The startup has a brilliant idea that could help save millions of lives and potentially drastically change the standards for manufacturing and distributing medicines.
