Participated · Series A · Jun 2020

TARA Biosystems develops induced pluripotent stem cell–derived human cardiac tissue and a cardiac tissue engineering platform for translational drug discovery. Its platform enables researchers to evaluate drug safety and efficacy endpoints in vitro and generate highly translatable preclinical data. The technology supports broad phenotypic analysis of healthy, gene-edited, patient-derived, and drug-induced models of human cardiac disease at scale. It captures integrated physiologic endpoint measurements including contractility, electrophysiology, calcium signaling, structure, and genomic, proteomic, and metabolic profiles. The company announced a $10 million Series A2 financing to scale its platform and advance its drug discovery programs. TARA says the funding will support expanded infrastructure and pharma partnerships to accelerate a portfolio of novel cardiac disease drug candidates. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City, the company focuses on producing human-relevant in vitro biology to improve translational outcomes. Tara Biosystems provides physiologically-relevant in vitro human cardiac tissue models (“heart-on-a-chip”) for toxicology and drug discovery applications. Its cardiac tissues are produced from human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes matured to an adult-like phenotype and interrogated to deliver direct measures of cardiac functionality, including contractile force. The technology is based on research from the laboratories of Columbia University Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic and University of Toronto Professor Milica Radisic, who are scientific co-founders. The company raised $2.25M in seed funding. It intends to use the funds to build commercial operations in New York City.