Coventry spin-out screens $340,000

InoCardia, a spin-out from Coventry University offering drug screening services, has secured a £229,000 ($340,000) investment from Mercia Fund Management.

The cash injection will allow InoCardia to develop and commercialise its pre-clinical drug testing service, which it is aiming at pharmaceutical companies. The technology is based on ten years of research conducted by Helen Maddock at the university’s Centre for Applied Biological and Exercise Sciences.

The technology works by mimicking the biomechanical performance of a cardiac muscle, letting drug developers test possible adverse effects of drug candidates on the cardiovascular. Specifically, the technology allows researchers to see whether a compound could lead to heart failure, before running a human clinical trial.

InoCardia’s in vitro system is more reliable than the current in vivo testing that drug developers have been able to conduct in animals.

Helen Maddock said: “Both the pharmaceutical industry and regulators recognise that contractility assessment is currently fraught with problems, so we are delighted that our research is now at a stage where we can confidently say that the work-loop assay (procedure) is the only relevant in vitro human model of cardio-toxicity available worldwide. We are already working with a multinational biopharmaceutical company and results are promising.”