Axxam and HeartBeat.bio Forge Strategic Partnership to Advance Human-Relevant Cardiovascular Drug Discovery

Milan-based Axxam S.p.A. (search)Search term and Vienna-based HeartBeat.bio AG (search)Search term have entered into a strategic partnership aimed at delivering next-generation, human-relevant solutions for cardiovascular drug discovery and cardiac safety assessment, the companies announced on July 9, 2026.

The alliance brings together Axxam's comprehensive early drug discovery services—spanning target validation, assay development, high-throughput screening, medicinal chemistry, ADME profiling, and toxicology—with HeartBeat.bio's proprietary 3D human cardiac organoid platform, known as Cardioids. These organoids are engineered to recapitulate key structural, cellular, and functional features of human heart tissue, offering a physiologically relevant platform for disease modeling, efficacy assessment, and early evaluation of cardiac safety liabilities.

"By integrating advanced human cardiac organoid models into our discovery workflows, we can offer our customers a more predictive and biologically relevant approach to cardiovascular drug discovery," said Ciriaco Maraschiello, CEO of Axxam. "This partnership strengthens our commitment to advancing innovative drug discovery solutions that improve decision-making, reduce development risk, and ultimately help bring better therapies to patients faster."

The collaboration is designed to improve translational confidence, enable earlier identification of promising therapeutic candidates, and support more informed decision-making throughout preclinical development. HeartBeat.bio contributes not only its Cardioid platform but also disease modeling capabilities, assay development expertise, and advanced data analytics infrastructure, while gaining access to Axxam's medicinal chemistry and ADMET profiling capabilities to advance its own proprietary drug pipeline.

Michael Krebs, CEO of HeartBeat.bio, underscored the industry's evolving needs. "The pharmaceutical industry increasingly recognizes the need for more predictive, human-relevant models to improve translation of preclinical research to clinical success," he said. "This collaboration enables Axxam's customers to identify the most promising compounds faster, assess cardiac safety with greater confidence, and make better-informed development decisions."

A Platform Built for Cardiac Precision

HeartBeat.bio's Cardioid platform integrates iPSC-derived cardiac organoids with advanced automation and AI-driven analytics, enabling scalable, human-centric drug discovery. The company, founded in 2021 and located at the Vienna Biocenter, is advancing its own therapeutic pipeline focused on heart failure (search)Search disease, with initial emphasis on cardiomyopathies (search)Search disease, myocardial fibrosis (search)Search disease, and cardiac remodeling—a chronic disease phenotype prevalent in most heart failure patients.

Axxam, meanwhile, brings decades of integrated discovery experience across the life sciences industry, supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, start-ups, patient foundations, and academic institutions from AI-enabled target identification through hit-to-lead optimization, regardless of therapeutic area or target class.

Embracing New Approach Methodologies

The partnership reflects the growing adoption of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) across the pharmaceutical industry, as organizations seek to enhance the translational relevance of preclinical findings, reduce development risk, decrease reliance on traditional animal models, and increase the likelihood of clinical success. By combining Axxam's end-to-end discovery value chain with HeartBeat.bio's human-relevant cardiac models, the two companies aim to set a new standard for cardiovascular drug development that prioritizes biological fidelity and predictive accuracy from the earliest stages of research.