Heart failure is a growing global health challenge caused by the heart muscle being unable to pump enough blood around the body to provide cells with sufficient oxygen and nutrients. More than 60 million people worldwide suffer from this progressive and incurable condition, resulting in poor quality of life, recurrent hospitalizations, and a high risk of death.
Current treatments for heart failure mainly ease symptoms and slow progression, without addressing the underlying cause: reduced contractility. While some existing drugs improve contractility in the short term, they are limited to hospital use and often cause severe side effects.
“Heart failure is a syndrome caused by a weak heart muscle. There are currently no drugs that can safely stimulate the heart to increase contractility”, says Lars Lund, founder of AnaCardio.
AnaCardio is addressing this critical need by developing the first drug that safely strengthens the pumping capacity of the heart in both the short and long term, based on many years of research.
From Insight to Innovation
Lars Lund is a professor of cardiology and has long focused his research on deepening the understanding of heart failure with the goal of improving care for those affected. But it was only when he began to approach the problem from a different angle that he arrived at a breakthrough.
This shift in perspective led to a new idea: instead of blocking or inhibiting proteins and hormones in the body, as existing treatments do, Lund aimed to find something that could instead stimulate the heart’s ability to pump blood.
From that point on, the search focused on identifying a substance or existing drug that could have a positive effect on the heart muscle. One of the more promising candidates was ghrelin, a hormone that occurs naturally in the body with several protective properties for the heart.
Soon after this, a proof-of-concept study was conducted among heart failure patients at Karolinska University Hospital, which showed that those who received ghrelin experienced an increase in the heart’s pumping capacity by almost 30 percent, without any signs of severe side effects.
For Lund, the results were a clear indication to commercialize the discovery. “The only way to bring this treatment to patients is with the help of a pharmaceutical company. The fastest path was to start our own, which we did with support from KI Innovations, the innovation support system at Karolinska Institutet”, says Lund.
Future of Heart Failure Treatment
With the discovery of this novel contractile mechanism, AnaCardio was founded. The company’s key focus is developing AC01, a drug molecule that binds the same receptor on cells as the ghrelin hormone, as a potential treatment for heart failure.
AC01 is currently being evaluated in an ongoing Phase Ib/IIa clinical study in heart failure patients across the EU and UK. The study began with a dose-escalation phase and has now advanced into a longer treatment phase with more patients and sites.
The results so far are promising, and further clinical studies are underway. The clinical team is now finalizing the design of the next, larger Phase IIb study, following positive guidance from both the FDA and EMA.
“This regulatory alignment in both Europe and the US strengthens our development path for AC01 and allows us to move forward with confidence into larger clinical studies”, says Elin Rosendahl, Chief Development Officer at AnaCardio.
The upcoming studies will require additional funding and partnerships. To date, AnaCardio has raised approximately $40 million from leading venture capital firms, but much more will be needed to take AC01 to market, where AnaCardio aims to bring an approved drug to patients in the early 2030s.
Our Team, Our Strength
At the heart of AnaCardio is a passionate and experienced team driven by the mission to transform treatment for heart failure patients. By combining scientific expertise with a shared commitment to innovation, the team works dedicatedly to advance AC01 from research to reality.
The journey began in 2021 when Patrik Strömberg, an experienced drug developer with a strong track record of leading both R&D and business development activities, was approached to lead the company as its CEO. Shortly thereafter, AnaCardio gained momentum with the licensing of its lead asset and closing the series A investment round in 2022. Today, the team has grown to around 10 and is based in a science park at Karolinska Institutet in Solna, close to the original site where the idea was born.
“AnaCardio gives me the opportunity to make a real difference for a large group of patients who currently have poor prognosis and limited treatment options. Even better, we are doing this by pioneering a new concept and are already making good progress. I cannot imagine more exciting work than this”, says Strömberg.
