Danicamtiv

Kardigan’s pulse-quickening fundraises stand in stark contrast to CEO Tassos Gianakakos’ earlier venture MyoKardia, which initially struggled to attract investors.\n Since launching one year ago with a hearty $300 million series A, Kardigan has been on a biotech speedrun. The company padded its coffers with another $254 million just 10 months later and announced its three licensed late-stage cardio assets, which Kardigan hopes to bring to market over the next four years.A common saying is that haste makes waste. But for Kardigan CEO Tassos Gianakakos, proving that heart medicines can be developed quickly is the whole point.“Hopefully, if we can execute here and get three medicines out in the next four years, we\'ll see more and more [biotechs] approaching cardiovascular disease,” Gianakakos told Fierce during a Jan. 26 interview. “And then we won\'t be talking about it anymore as the No. 1 killer of people in the world.” Cardiovascular disease’s killer status isn’t matched by concomitant interest from the biotech sector, the CEO noted, with just 8% of all biotechs focused on the area.“Five percent of drugs in development, full stop, are focused on cardiovascular disease,” he added. “There\'s 10 times as many for oncology, [but] CV disease kills more people than all cancers combined.”With Kardigan, Gianakakos is weaving together his past leadership experience with a mature pipeline, extensive data collection and clinical trial innovations he hopes will produce a biotech tapestry that is built to last—and inspire the rest of the industry to follow suit. Pumped-up investors Kardigan’s pulse-quickening fundraises stand in stark contrast to Gianakakos’ earlier venture MyoKardia. That company, he said, struggled to attract interest from investors.“Every financing was a bit of a struggle,” Gianakakos recalled. “When I joined as the first CEO, we were shaking some test tubes and thinking about some stuff preclinically. It was not a hot place to be, cardiology.”All that tube shaking ultimately led to mavacamten, a myosin inhibitor that MyoKardia put through phase 3 trials for obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The data impressed Bristol Myers Squibb, which came knocking in 2020 with a $13.1 billion acquisition offer the biotech simply couldn’t refuse.Mavacamten was eventually approved in 2022 as Camzyos and is on track to become a reliable moneymaker for BMS, netting $714 million in revenue through the first nine months of 2025. With his first CEO gig spinning into such success, Gianakakos has secured support from investors who believe mavacamten’s victory can be replicated. His team has brought in a clutch of late-stage candidates that “address the root cause of disease” in areas where there are currently no approved drugs, he said.They include tonlamarsen from Ionis Pharmaceuticals for acute severe hypertension, ataciguat from Sanofi and the Mayo Clinic for calcific aortic valve stenosis and, funny enough, danicamtiv, which was originally discovered by MyoKardia and has now come home to Gianakakos’ crew via BMS.“We wanted to start at scale,” Gianakakos explained. “I set off and essentially was business development guy, and we evaluated about 25 or so late-stage products.”Kardigan is now recruiting for a phase 2b/3 trial of danicamtiv in genetic and familial dilated cardiomyopathy, while tonlamarsen is in a phase 2b study and ataciguat in phase 3. The company has previously shared that it expects multiple data readouts this year and has already revealed a slice of phase 2b data for danicamtiv at the Heart Failure Society of America’s annual conference in September 2025.The Bay Area biotech also has a phase 2 program that is currently under wraps, Gianakakos said, along with several internal discovery programs that are still a few years away from the clinic. The company intends to market and commercialize its potential products itself, he added.But even the impressive $554 million raised by Kardigan so far isn’t enough to power this pipeline, Gianakakos said, at least not if you’re running a traditional cardiology trial. For Kardigan, innovative trial operations are just as important as innovative science, if not more so. Typical late-stage cardio studies can run up a price tag in the billions, an imposing cost that may serve to scare away would-be financiers.“I would have a lot of conversations with investors, even after we started generating data, where you can just tell they have been burned in the past by these kinds of big, expensive studies,” Gianakakos said. So Kardigan got creative. Whole-hearted health Gianakakos is doing CEO double-duty these days, also running a digital health company called Prolaio that Kardigan acquired in March 2025. Gianakakos and fellow former MyoKardia exec Jay Edelberg, M.D., Ph.D., co-founded both Kardigan and Prolaio, with the latter outfit now providing a massive bedrock of data for the burgeoning cardio company.It’s Prolaio’s software platform and wearable heart monitoring devices, in addition to traditional tools like genetics and biomarker analysis, that enable Kardigan to streamline its trials while also building a base of knowledge to inform future decision-making.“Our studies are 300 to 500 patients in the entire registration program, generally speaking,” Gianakakos said. “Usually those are in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, for the traditional approach.”Kardigan’s first step to smaller trials is targeting specific patients using genetic data, similar to how specific populations are enrolled in cancer trials.“We have a sense going in [of] who is going to receive optimal benefit, and we select for those patients,” Gianakakos said. Once patients are confirmed responders to treatment, “then we will move people and study them appropriately in different arms.”The second step is the mounds of data provided by Prolaio, with Gianakakos using Kardigan’s hypertension study as an example. The biotech is harnessing its tech outfit’s monitoring tools to track daily blood pressure at home rather than taking a baseline measurement that is then compared to data from the end of the treatment period.“That gives you 10 to 100x more data, and just improves your statistical power significantly,” the CEO said. “So you can run with smaller studies without sacrificing your statistics.” It also means the data come from everyday life rather than during a clinic visit, he noted. This kind of extensive data collection is often overlooked by other companies, according to Gianakakos, which instead focus on just the data needed to support a given drug’s approval. If a trial is focused on heart function, he said, why not also give the patient a smartwatch to see whether the drug affects the heart’s rhythm, too?“The cost in doing that research is basically trivial,” he said. “You just have to have the intention.”Kardigan also keeps an eye on patients who don’t respond to treatment, gathering reams of data to try to understand why the drug isn’t working and how a new approach could potentially benefit them.“This is something that I think generally our industry doesn\'t do,” Gianakakos said. “Go all the way with the nonresponders, because you are going to learn something.”As Gianakakos, Chief Medical Officer Edelberg and the rest of the Kardigan team continue developing their pipeline through internal research and acquisitions, the CEO hopes to emulate in cardiovascular disease what Gilead Sciences and Vertex Pharmaceuticals have achieved in HIV and cystic fibrosis, respectively.“[Vertex] focused on the disease and not on a drug. And when you\'re wired to say, ‘We\'re going to cure cystic fibrosis,’ you keep going. Today, they are covering almost all of the forms of cystic fibrosis,” Gianakakos said. “You can say the same about Gilead and HIV.”For Kardigan, the goal isn’t to get drugs approved—it’s to end cardiovascular disease’s reign of terror.“We\'re defining ourselves as a heart health company, not as a ‘this particular drug’ company,” Gianakakos said. “We have an expansive view.”

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. & PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kardigan™, a heart health company modernizing cardiovascular (CV) drug development, today announced its upcoming corporate presentation at the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (“JPM 2026”) on Monday, January 12 at 8:00 a.m. PT. The presentation marks an important milestone for Kardigan as it enters 2026 with multiple clinical data readouts expected across its late-stage portfolio of personalized CV medicines in specific types of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), hypertension, and calcific aortic valve stenosis (CAVS). “2025 was a landmark year for Kardigan, beginning with the public introduction of our vision to build the cardiovascular company of the future and ending with a powerful foundation for what we expect to achieve in 2026 and beyond. Over the course of the past year, we acquired Prolaio™, a leading CV clinical intelligence company, initiated three late-stage clinical trials in diseases where no treatments exist, and expanded our shareholder base with several leading biotech investors,” said Tassos Gianakakos, co-founder, chief executive officer, and chair of Kardigan. “As we continue to execute our vision, I’m proud to welcome Andy to the Kardigan Executive Committee as our chief strategy officer. His leadership in the biopharmaceutical industry driving growth at companies like Horizon Therapeutics aligns perfectly with Kardigan’s goal of becoming the leader in discovering, developing, and delivering meaningful new treatments for cardiovascular disease.” Throughout 2025, Kardigan achieved several key milestones that set the stage for a promising year ahead. Following its launch in January with $300 million in Series A funding, the company went on to secure another $254 million in Series B funding in October from leading long-term, growth-oriented investors. Earlier in the year, the company acquired Prolaio, and introduced its pipeline and strategy to develop danicamtiv1 for genetic DCM, tonlamarsen2 for acute severe hypertension (ASH), and ataciguat3 for CAVS. Positive phase 2 data for danicamtiv and ataciguat were presented at the HFSA Annual Scientific Meeting 2025 and American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2025, respectively. To build the CV company of the future, Kardigan is applying Cardiac Intelligence – the integration of precision medicine, real-world data, and proven CV leadership – to a field long constrained by slow, costly, and imprecise drug development. This proprietary approach targets the root causes of disease and positions Kardigan to develop first-in-class medicines for patients with specific types of DCM, ASH, and CAVS, where no treatments exist. Kardigan has also incorporated Prolaio’s continuous remote monitoring and data-driven insights to enable smaller, faster, and more capital-efficient trials in well-defined patient populations, with the goal of increasing the probability of success and accelerating time to registration. With clinical trials for these advanced programs now underway, Kardigan is positioned to deliver three medicines to patients over the next four years. “I’m honored to join the Kardigan team, whose deep scientific expertise and bold vision have the potential to redefine cardiovascular care,” said Pasternak, chief strategy officer of Kardigan. “The opportunity to contribute to a company that prioritizes both innovation and patient impact is truly inspiring. I look forward to building on Kardigan’s vision to create a long-term and enduring company that delivers meaningful solutions for those affected by heart disease for decades to come.” Andy Pasternak, a biopharmaceutical executive with decades of leadership in corporate strategy, business development, commercial development, and portfolio and pipeline management, joins the Kardigan Executive Committee as chief strategy officer, reporting to Tassos Gianakakos. Pasternak will be responsible for corporate and product strategy, business development, and portfolio management in this role. Pasternak’s appointment reflects Kardigan's long-term growth strategy for advancing innovative therapies to patients and shaping the future of CV care. His expertise will be instrumental in guiding the company's strategic direction as it enters a year of execution marked by multiple clinical data readouts. Pasternak most recently served as senior advisor at Bain & Company after leading corporate strategy, business development, commercial development / new product planning, and portfolio management as executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Horizon Therapeutics. Pasternak also chairs the Board of Directors at Context Therapeutics, is an adjunct lecturer in the Healthcare Program at the Kellogg School of Management, and holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. About Kardigan Kardigan is a patient-driven heart health company that is modernizing cardiovascular drug development to deliver medicines that move patients beyond symptom management to functional cures. By matching critical disease drivers with treatment responders identified in clinical trials, Kardigan is developing a portfolio of medicines that modify the underlying cardiovascular disease pathophysiology to get patients closer to the cures they deserve. The company is based in South San Francisco, California and Princeton, New Jersey. To learn more, visit Kardigan.bio. 1 Kardigan in-licensed exclusive worldwide development and commercialization rights to danicamtiv, an investigational drug discovered at MyoKardia and further developed by Bristol Myers Squibb. 2 Kardigan in-licensed exclusive worldwide development and commercialization rights to tonlamarsen, an investigational drug discovered and developed by Ionis. 3 Kardigan acquired rights to ataciguat, an investigational drug developed by, and in-licensed from, Sanofi and Mayo Clinic.