Cubase Bio, HeartBeat.bio win €1M Eurostars grant for 3D heart-disease mapping
What's the deal? Stockholm-based Cubase Bio and Vienna's HeartBeat.bio have secured roughly €1 million in EurostarsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → funding for FACTS-3D, a joint project applying 3D spatial mapping to cardiovascular drug discovery. The grant flows through Sweden's VinnovaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with co-funding from the European UnionDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → via Horizon EuropeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What's the endgame? The project pairs Cubase Bio's 3D spatial transcriptomics platform with HeartBeat.bio's human cardiac organoids to study myocardial fibrosis, a key driver of heart failure. The partners aim to build a scalable, high-throughput drug-screening approach in 96- and 384-well formats.
The context: Cubase Bio, founded in 2024, develops technology to map molecular and cellular information within intact biological samples in three dimensions. HeartBeat.bio, founded in 2021, runs a Cardioid platform using iPSC-derived cardiac organoids to study conditions including cardiomyopathies and heart failure.
Why now? Heart failure affects more than 64 million people worldwide, and conventional preclinical tools such as animal models and 2D cell cultures often miss the complexity of human biology. "The way cells organize in three dimensions is central to how a heart chamber is built, what happens when fibrosis occurs and how the heart remodels itself," said Malte Kühnemund, chief executive officer of Cubase Bio.
What they said: "The FACTS-3D project brings together two highly complementary technologies to address one of the major challenges in cardiovascular drug discovery," said Michael Krebs, chief executive officer of HeartBeat.bio. He framed it as a step toward using Cardioids to uncover and validate novel targets for heart failure.
The signal: Non-dilutive grants remain a route for early-stage European deep-tech to fund high-risk research. At about €1 million, this round sits modestly against the wider funding landscape, but it lets two young companies test whether 3D spatial context can improve where 2D methods fall short.
Read more: arcticstartup.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
