Novoheart & AstraZeneca to Develop World’s First Human Specific Model for Heart Failure
The global stem cell biotechnology company Novoheart is delighted to announce its partnership with AstraZeneca, an international biopharmaceutical company. The collaboration is an initiative to develop the world’s first in vitro model of human heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), a typical condition among the women and elderly. This condition is prevalent among almost 10% of women over 80 years of age.
Heart Failure, also known as cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death globally with an estimated number of 64.3 million cases in 2017. The number keeps on increasing each year. This creates a global economic burden of over US$100 billion every year. Around 50% of the heart failure cases being HFpEF, it is growing into a major healthcare problem in the world with its diverse etiology and pathological mechanisms poorly understood. The disease models of human heart failure available to date including the animal models failed to exactly mimic the HFpEF due to these complexities. The lack of disease models was limiting the preclinical testing of drugs for the disease, causing no improvement in the clinical outcomes for HFpEF and the unavailability of effective therapies against the same over the last decades.
AstraZeneca is planning to establish a new in vitro model for HFpEF by adopting Novoheart’s 3-D human ventricular cardiac organoid chamber (hvCOC) technology, that mimics the main features of HFpEF. The only human engineered cardiac tissue available to date, also known as “human heart-in-a-jar” can reproduce human heart pump performance including developed pressure and ejection fraction.
Contrary to animal models, hvCOC can be optimized by specific matrix and cellular compositions, and personalised human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
Novoheart, together with AstraZeneca hopes to develop a unique model for understanding HFpEF, recognizing new therapeutic targets, and providing effective therapeutics for treating HFpEF patients. The intellectual property rights for the HFpEF hvCOC model will be exclusively owned by Novoheart.
