Medera’s Novoheart, Curi Bio partner for human-based cardiac drug screening

Medera announced that its wholly owned preclinical subsidiary for disease modelling and drug discovery, Novoheart, has entered into a partnership with Curi Bio. This strategic collaboration integrates Novoheart’s human Heart-in-a-Jar technology with Curi Bio’s Pulse analytics platform, delivering an 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. 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. On September 5, 2024, Medera and Keen Vision Acquisition (KVAC) Corporation announced they had entered into a definitive merger agreement.