cardiovascular-disease
(2)
Bitterroot Bio
Bitterroot Bio is a Palo Alto, California clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the field of cardio-immunology - the science of how the immune system drives heart disease. Founded by veterans of Forty Seven (the CD47 company Gilead bought for ~$5 billion), Bitterroot is turning the immune-checkpoint playbook from cancer toward atherosclerosis. Its lead candidate, BRB-002, is an immunomodulating protein that blocks the CD47 'don't eat me' signal on arterial plaque, prompting macrophages to clear inflammation and stabilize plaque - a mechanism that works differently from cholesterol-lowering drugs. The company launched out of stealth in June 2023 with a $145 million Series A, which it called the largest-ever round for a preclinical cardiovascular biotech.
HAYA Therapeutics
HAYA Therapeutics is a clinical-stage precision medicines company spun out of Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) in 2019. It develops RNA-guided programmable therapeutics that target long non-coding RNAs in the so-called 'dark genome' - the roughly 98% of human DNA that does not code for proteins - to reprogram disease-driving cell states. Its lead candidate, HTX-001, is an antisense oligonucleotide targeting the cardiac lncRNA Wisper for heart failure, with a broader pipeline spanning fibrosis, metabolic disease and cancer. The company is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, with US laboratory operations in San Diego, and raised a $65M Series A in May 2025.