€62.5m · Series B · Healthtech · Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm-based AnaCardio has raised €62.5m in Series B financing co-led by Novo Holdings and the Ljungström family office. Helsinn, Pureos Bioventures, Sound Bioventures, Industrifonden, Flerie, LLD Nybohov Invest and new investor Innovestor Life Science also participated. According to AnaCardio's announcement, the round will fully fund Phase 2b development of AC01, its oral candidate for chronic advanced heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.
AC01 is designed to activate the ghrelin receptor and improve the heart's ability to contract through a calcium-sensitising mechanism. AnaCardio is trying to separate that effect from the safety problems that limit conventional inotropes, which are generally used only for short-term support because of risks including arrhythmia and ischaemia. The company licensed the molecule from Helsinn in 2022 after research led by Professor Lars Lund at Karolinska Institutet.
Financing a defined clinical inflection point
The Series B is tied to a specific development programme rather than a broad pipeline expansion. GOAL-HF2 is planned as a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of two AC01 doses over 12 weeks in about 400 patients at roughly 100 sites across North America and Europe. AnaCardio expects the first participant in the fourth quarter of 2026 and aims to produce a Phase 3-ready dataset by 2028. The company says the trial design has been agreed with the FDA and EMA and has regulatory clearance to begin.
That larger study must test whether encouraging early signals survive a longer trial in a much broader population. In the 58-patient GOAL-HF1 Phase 1b/2a study, AnaCardio reported that patients receiving the higher dose for 28 days showed a 22% increase in cardiac output from baseline and a 4.8 percentage-point improvement in ejection fraction, versus 1.6 points for placebo. The company also reported no tachycardia, sustained arrhythmia, ischaemia or symptomatic hypotension, but those findings remain early-stage evidence rather than proof of reduced hospitalisation or mortality.
The financing therefore buys AnaCardio time and scale to answer the central commercial question: whether an oral contractility therapy can show durable benefit without recreating the safety trade-offs of older drugs. The company says around one-third of patients with this form of heart failure do not respond adequately to, or cannot tolerate, guideline-directed therapy. A positive Phase 2b result would not complete development, but it could turn AC01 from a promising physiological signal into an asset ready for the larger and more expensive Phase 3 step.
Sources checked:
AnaCardio · Fierce Biotech · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
