Cardior Receives EUR 1.01 Million Grant to Identify Novel Oligonucleotides for the Treatment of Chronic Heart Failure Collaboration with Hannover Medical School (MHH)

Goal of the project is the identification and preclinical development of therapeutic oligonucleotides for the treatment of heart diseases. Under the collaboration, Cardior expects to broaden its portfolio of drug candidates for the treatment of various heart failure indications.

The grant is provided by the state of Lower Saxony and the European Regional Development Fund (EFRE). The three-year collaboration will start in 2019.

“We aim to halt and reverse heart failure by blocking regulatory RNAs that play a crucial role in the onset and progression of the disease which comes in multiple forms,” said Prof. Dr. Thomas Thum, CSO of Cardior. “Our first product candidate CDR, a synthetic antisense-oligonucleotide, inhibits a molecular master-switch microRNA involved in the onset of heart failure after myocardial infarction. This approach can also be applied to other RNA targets and heart diseases. It is the goal of this collaboration to identify novel targets and therapeutic oligonucleotides so that we can expand our pipeline of drug candidates to combat heart diseases.”

Cardior’s collaboration partner, the Institute of Molecular and Translational Therapeutic Strategies (IMTTS, Hannover Medical School), is currently focusing on the identification of functional, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which play a crucial role in the processes of cardiac regeneration and ageing.