Drug design company Numerate Inc reported on Wednesday the receipt of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant, valued at USD2m, from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) following successful completion of work funded by a Phase I Awardi.

In collaboration with members of the UCLA Cardiovascular Research Laboratory (CVRL), Numerate will use the funds to support the discovery of novel, small molecule drug candidates that address the need for a well-tolerated antiarrhythmic therapy for the treatment and prevention of ventricular tachycardias and fibrillation (VT/VF).

Arrhythmias are caused by problems with the electrical system that regulates the steady heartbeat. The most serious and life-threatening arrhythmia is ventricular fibrillation (VF), which results in the heart being unable to pump blood and is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death.

Uwe Klein, Ph.D., VP of Biology at Numerate, will continue to serve as principal investigator and will lead discovery efforts for the programme titled 'Peripherally restricted α2/δ-1 subunit ligands that modulate CaV channel gating as novel antiarrhythmic drugs'.

The co-investigators from the UCLA CVRL include Dr Hrayr S. Karagueuzian, Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, director of Translational Arrhythmias Research Section, and Dr Riccardo Olcese, Professor of Anesthesiology and Physiology at UCLA, Division of Molecular Medicine.

As part of the Phase I funding, the research team applied Numerate's AI-driven small molecule drug discovery platform to identify two lead compounds and demonstrate feasibility of the programme. The two lead candidates met all of the established programme milestones for the Phase I grant.