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6 July 2018Americas

Broad and Bayer to build heart failure datasets

The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT has expanded its partnership with German pharmaceutical company Bayer to develop new therapies for heart failure.

Bayer first partnered with Broad in 2013 to develop an oncology programme, and in 2015 they collaborated again to better understand cardiovascular disease.

Now, their partnership will extend to the creation of the precision cardiology laboratory which they said “will use non-genomic approaches to jumpstart the development of new therapeutics for heart failure”.

More than 900,000 people are diagnosed with heart failure annually in the US, according to the American Heart Association. The condition results from the heart’s failure to pump enough blood, and is one of the most common reasons for the hospitalisation of adults.

Heart failure has a number of causes, and the laboratory will use new tools and methods to better understand and treat them.

The goal of the joint project is to develop high-resolution, single cell maps of cardiovascular tissues in human and animal models.

Scientists from both organisations will work in the laboratory. They will use donated tissue samples to build datasets to help accelerate understanding of heart failure.

The partnership brings together Broad’s “innovative methods” for scientific discovery, such as single cell sequencing, and Bayer’s “long history” of drug development. Bayer and Broad plan to to openly share findings that arise from the collaboration.

The laboratory will be governed by a joint steering committee. Patrick Ellinor, director of cardiac arrhythmia service at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, will lead the research.

Ellinor said that the high-resolution maps of cells and tissues will be a “profound asset for understanding heart failure and for developing new and better drugs”.

Bayer is dedicating an additional $22 million to the collaboration over the next five years.

Joerg Moeller, head of research and development at Bayer, said the partnership will enable the company to deepen its understanding of cardiovascular diseases.

Moeller added: “Joint laboratories are a novel partnering model for industry and academia and are bringing both Bayer and Broad cardiovascular research to the next level.”

Bayer has had a busy year so far, after recently completing its $66 billion buyout of agricultural corporation Monsanto. Its extended partnership with The Broad was announced on June 29.

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