Sygnature Discovery’s hit finding expertise in high demand as cardiac biotech, River BioMedics, receives an additional €2M seed investment

Sygnature Discovery (Sygnature) is delighted to announce that its customer, River BioMedics, has raised an additional €2M in seed funding to continue its life-saving cardiovascular drug research.

Libertatis Ergo Holding, an independent subsidiary of Leiden University joins the investment syndicate alongside further investment from existing investors FIRST fund, managed by BioGeneration Ventures (BGV), KIKK Capital and Oost NL.

The biotech will continue partnering with Sygnature to drive its novel, genetically validated cardiovascular disease project pipeline.

The two companies have collaborated in cardiovascular drug discovery since March 2021. Programs have integrated Sygnature’s novel assay development and hit identification expertise with River BioMedics’ unique, state-of-the-art technology to advance human-predictive in vitro 3D heart models and its deep cardiac biology knowledge.

The biotech’s aim is to develop medicines that treat the underlying cause of heart failure rather than merely treating the symptoms. The new investment sees River BioMedics and Sygnature further strengthen their successful partnership through continued research and collaboration.

River BioMedics says it will utilize the funds to advance compound development for its lead project, which is focused on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and to continue efforts on its earlier-stage pipeline.

John Unitt, Vice President of Inflammation and Immunology at Sygnature Discovery, says:

“Cardiovascular diseases continue to be a leading cause of death globally, and the need for effective treatments is more crucial than ever.

“Sygnature has been actively involved in exploring novel approaches for cardiovascular drug development. Its groundbreaking research focuses on identifying new drug targets and developing innovative therapies to address the unmet medical needs in this field.

“It’s great that River BioMedics has attracted further funding to support its ongoing cardiac drug discovery research and will continue to collaborate with Sygnature to progress its projects.”

Nicky Cooper, CEO at River BioMedics, says: “We are excited to have this additional funding to enable us to continue to collaborate with the highly experienced Sygnature scientists on our drug discovery programmes for cardiovascular disease.”

Work continues between the two companies across a number of cardiovascular-related projects.