Here’s Brano Therapeutics. They’re a spin-off from Singapore’s Duke NUS-Medical School. And they just raised $6.8M in seed funding to develop new treatments for heart failure. 

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Investor check. Trinity Innovation Bioventure Singapore and SEEDS led the round, while SGInnovate and LIVE Ventures joined in. 

• LIVE Ventures committed $380K, marking their first direct investment in a spin-off company. 

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🥼 Next steps

They’ll use the fresh capital to advance the development of novel therapies for heart failure, including Heart Failure with preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF), a condition with limited treatment options.  

• They plan to develop new compounds and move their lead therapies into clinical trials by 2029.

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🏃🏼 The context

Heart failure is a growing public health issue, affecting around 64M people globally. 

• In Singapore, it accounts for around 17% of cardiac admissions. 

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❣️ Where Brano comes in

Brano’s solution is based on work by Duke-NUS scientists and collaborators, including the University of Cincinnati, that focused on understanding the major biological drivers of HFpEF. 

The team identified a metabolic dysfunction associated with poorer clinical outcomes. 

• This suggested that a failing heart becomes less efficient at processing key nutrients, leading to an accumulation of metabolic by-products in the blood, contributing to cardiac dysfunction. 

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Their plan. Their preclinical experiments show that a small-molecule compound may restore metabolic regulation, significantly reducing cardiac stiffness and improving cardiac function.