Axxam and HeartBeat.bio partner to advance human-relevant cardiovascular drug discovery and cardiac safety assessment

Axxam and HeartBeat.bio partner to advance human-relevant cardiovascular drug discovery and cardiac safety assessment

Milan (Italy) and Vienna (Austria) – July 9, 2026 – Axxam, a premier provider of integrated early drug discovery services, and HeartBeat.bio, a biotech company pioneering human cardiac organoid technologies for drug discovery, today announced a strategic partnership to deliver next-generation human-relevant solutions for cardiovascular drug discovery and cardiac safety assessment.

The collaboration combines Axxam’s end-to-end drug discovery capabilities with HeartBeat.bio’s proprietary human cardiac organoid (Cardioid) platform to improve translational confidence, enable earlier identification of promising therapeutic candidates, and support more informed decision-making throughout preclinical development.

The companies will leverage Axxam’s expertise across the early drug discovery value chain – from target validation, assay development through high-throughput screening, compound library access and management, medicinal chemistry, ADME profiling, and toxicology – with HeartBeat.bio’s scalable and automated 3D human cardiac organoid platform, disease modelling capabilities, assay development expertise, and advanced data analytics infrastructure.

HeartBeat.bio’s proprietary Cardioids are engineered to recapitulate key structural, cellular, and functional features of human heart tissue, providing a physiologically relevant platform for disease modelling, 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 pharmaceutical industry increasingly recognizes the need for more predictive, human-relevant models to improve translation of preclinical research to clinical success," said Michael Krebs, CEO of HeartBeat.bio. "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, while strengthening our medicinal chemistry and ADMET profiling capabilities to advance our proprietary drug pipeline.”

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.

About Axxam S.p.A.

Axxam S.p.A. is a leading provider of integrated discovery services across the life sciences industry. Axxam supports pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, start-ups, patient foundations, and academic institutions throughout the drug discovery journey, from AI-enabled target identification and wet-lab target validation to hit identification and hit-to-lead optimization, regardless of therapeutic area or target class.

Its services include assay development, high-throughput screening using either Axxam's proprietary synthetic and natural compound collections or client libraries, hit validation, hit-to-lead, and compound management.

The same science-driven approach is also applied to the discovery of new bioactive compounds for crop protection, animal health, food and beverage, pet food, cosmetics, and fragrance applications.

For more information, visit www.axxam.com.

About HeartBeat.bio

HeartBeat.bio AG is a pioneering TechBio company developing breakthrough therapies for heart failure through its next-generation Cardioid Drug Discovery Platform. This proprietary platform integrates iPSC-derived cardiac organoids with advanced automation and AI-driven analytics to enable scalable, human-centric drug discovery. Utilizing physiologically relevant and scalable human model systems, HeartBeat.bio enhances translational predictability, shortens development timelines, and reduces clinical failure rates.

The company is advancing its own therapeutic pipeline while strategically partnering with pharma and biotech companies to co-develop transformative heart failure treatments. Initial focus areas include cardiomyopathies, myocardial fibrosis, and its effects on cardiac remodeling, a chronic disease phenotype prevalent in most heart failure patients.

HeartBeat.bio was founded in 2021 and is located at the Vienna Biocenter in Austria, one of the leading life science clusters in Europe. The company received private investments by aws Gründungsfonds II, i&i Biotech Fund, Invest AG, red-stars.com data AG, and Tensor Ventures Fund as well as grants from the Austrian promotional bank (AWS), Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and the Vienna Business Agency.

For further information, please visit www.heartbeat.bio or follow us on LinkedIn.