Medera’s Novoheart and Curi Bio Partner to Transform Human-Based Cardiac Drug Screening
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Medera Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on targeting difficult-to-treat or currently incurable diseases with significant unmet needs, today announced that its wholly owned preclinical subsidiary for disease modelling and drug discovery, Novoheart, has entered into a transformative partnership with Curi Bio Inc., a leader in preclinical screening technologies. This strategic collaboration integrates Novoheart’s industry-leading human Heart-in-a-Jar technology with Curi Bio’s advanced Pulse™ analytics platform, delivering an innovative solution for accelerated, high-content, human-based cardiac drug development.
The partnership reflects a shared focus on the rapidly emerging market of human-based preclinical models for drug development that has been stimulated by the recent passing of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which calls for the development of superior human-based alternatives to traditional animal testing.
To date, human-based mini-Heart models for diseases traditionally difficult to recapitulate using experimental animals, such as Friedreich’s Ataxia and Heart Failure with preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF), have been successfully co-developed with global pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer and AstraZeneca. In addition, Novoheart’s mini-Heart models have successfully supported Medera, and its clinical subsidiary Sardocor, to obtain Investigational New Drug (IND) clearance and Fast Track Designation (FTD) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an ongoing first-in-human gene therapy clinical trial in accordance to the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, validating the platform’s translational power.
Curi Bio brings complementary strengths with its Mantarray™ contractility system, Nautilai™ calcium imaging system, and Pulse™ cloud-based analytics. The Pulse platform integrates high-throughput data processing, powerful cloud-based analytics, and intuitive visualization tools to streamline complex biological datasets into actionable insights with a few simple mouse clicks. With always-on accessibility and real-time updates that enable novel measurements, Pulse ensures researchers have uninterrupted access to powerful analytics, enabling timely and data-driven decisions to inform drug development.
As the first step in their partnership, Curi Bio is adapting Pulse to process the unique pressure-volume data generated by Novoheart’s Heart-in-a-Jar. This integration aims to enhance Novoheart’s unparalleled platform by enabling smart, high-content assessment of cardiac pump function, significantly reducing the time and cost required for screening drug candidates. Together with the newly introduced multi-heart recording technology, the efficiency has been estimated to improve by as much as 100-fold. The integrated solution will initially be made available to select early access customers.
“This integration underscores Curi Bio’s ongoing commitment to delivering innovative solutions for human-relevant drug discovery,” said Nicholas Geisse, CEO of Curi Bio. “This partnership with Novoheart exemplifies how complementary collaborations can bring the next generation of human-specific cardiac technologies to the forefront of drug discovery, ultimately benefiting patients worldwide.”
“Medera believes in strength through collaboration, and partnering with Curi Bio provides a strategic opportunity based on our shared vision for the drug development field,” said Ronald Li, CEO and co-Founder of Medera. “By joining forces and leveraging our complementary strengths, this is a first step toward a long-term partnership that will keep both companies at the very forefront of in vitro human-based drug screening, ultimately delivering safer, more effective therapies to patients with maximal efficiency and success.”
“We are very excited about the strategic collaboration between Medera and Curi Bio. As cardiac safety is critical to all new drug discovery and development, we believe this collaboration can offer a more holistic approach in better determining the safety of new drugs, more accurately assessing new drug dosages, and further enhancing human safety in drug development process,” said Kenneth KC Wong, Chairman and CEO of Keen Vision Acquisition Corporation (“KVAC”, Nasdaq: KVAC, KVACW).
Source: globenewswire.com
