Cambridge-based CardiaTec, a Biotech startup raised €5.8 million in their seed funding round. This funding will boost the development of their computational platform. The program is intended for solutions to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of death in the world. The investment elevates the belief in AI solutions to solve health problems that may otherwise be difficult in the traditional manner.
Image Source: CardiaTec
Funding Details
The €5.8 million seed funding was received from Montage Ventures, with Continuum Health Ventures, Laidlaw Ventures, APEX Ventures, and several angel investors. This investment will allow CardiaTec to scale its data acquisition, provide a means to validate therapeutic targets in the wet lab arm and build its team in Cambridge.
Diseases and Solution
Cardiovascular diseases make up 17.9 million deaths of the leading causes of death globally and ISH is the leading cause. The 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 given, the average cost of the process called drug development and being able to take a drug through it and get it on the market is estimated to be approximately $2.2 billion, and a failure rate of roughly 90%. This inefficiency underlines the necessity of new solutions.
CardiaTec’s software works independently of hardware and is based on complex computational algorithms that process large amounts of biological data. This enables advanced knowledge of cardiovascular 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 might be missed in conventional analysis.
The startup has partnerships with 65 hospitals based in the UK and the US obtaining human heart tissues. This cooperation has led to the generation of the largest human heart tissue multi-omics database in the world. In this way, CardiaTec expects to identify previously unknown causes of cardiovascular diseases and create specific treatments for them.
Integration of AI in Drug Discovery
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology plays a role in CardiaTec’s platform. AI algorithms analyze and create meaning for large volumes of biological data that a human would find very hard to handle. This capability enables researchers to estimate how various chemical compounds will engage with definite targets in the human body, which expedites the identification of potent drug leads.
CardiaTec CTO Namshik Han is a lecturer in AI in drug discovery at the University of Cambridge and the head of AI at the Milner Therapeutics Institute. He has utilized 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 CardiaTec is an example of the impact of AI in the biotech industry. This startup is helping tackle some of the issues in drug discovery hence allowing for the development of better treatment for cardiovascular diseases. AI and multi-Omics data form a new trend for researchers to address complicated health issues.
The success journey of the startup also underscores the need for synergy between academic institutions and corporate giants. The origins of CardiaTec at the University of Cambridge and the collaborations with hospitals show how the academic approach should work in conjunction with its implementation. This synergy is imperative for the optimization of innovation and the application of science to solutions.
Conclusion
The €5.8 million seed funding is a significant achievement for CardiaTec but for the cardiovascular drug discovery industry in general. The combination of AI and multi-omics data places CardiaTec in a unique position to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. The startup has a brilliant idea that can help save millions of people and possibly change the standards of how drugs are created and distributed comprehensively.
