AnaCardio, a Swedish clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, has raised €62.5 million, about $70.9 million, in a Series B financing to advance a potential new class of treatment for patients with advanced heart failure. The company announced the completion of the round on 30 September 2026.
The financing was co-led by Novo Holdings, the investment company that controls Novo Nordisk, and the Ljungström family office. It included participation from Helsinn, the Swiss pharmaceutical group that originally developed AnaCardio's lead drug, along with existing investors Pureos Bioventures, Sound Bioventures, Industrifonden, Flerie and LLD Nybohov Invest AB. Innovestor Life Science joined as a new investor.
AnaCardio has now raised around €100 million since it was founded.
A large and under-treated patient group
Heart failure is a chronic condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. It affects tens of millions of people worldwide and is a leading cause of hospitalisation among older adults.
AnaCardio is focused on heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), in which the heart muscle contracts less forcefully than normal. Although several classes of drugs have improved outcomes for these patients in recent decades, around a third of patients with HFrEF do not respond to, or cannot tolerate, standard treatment, according to the company. Those patients are at risk of progressing to advanced disease, which carries a poor prognosis.
For patients with advanced heart failure, doctors can use drugs known as inotropes, which make the heart contract more strongly. But these are typically given intravenously and work by increasing calcium levels inside heart muscle cells, which can trigger dangerous heart rhythms and has been associated with worse long-term outcomes. A safe, oral drug that improves the heart's pumping ability would address a major gap in treatment.
How AC01 works
AnaCardio's lead candidate, AC01, is a first-in-class oral ghrelin receptor agonist. Ghrelin is a hormone best known for its role in stimulating appetite, but research has shown it also affects the heart. The company's programme builds on work led by Professor Lars Lund at Karolinska Institutet, which showed that activating ghrelin signalling could improve cardiac function.
Rather than raising calcium levels inside heart cells, AC01 is designed to make the heart muscle more responsive to calcium, strengthening contractions through a different mechanism from conventional inotropes. If that approach works as intended, it could improve heart function without the side effects that have limited existing drugs.
AnaCardio was spun out of research at Karolinska Institutet in 2017 and in-licensed AC01 from Helsinn in 2022.
Encouraging early results
In an earlier study, GOAL-HF1, AC01 was tested in 58 patients with HFrEF across 14 sites in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Italy. The Phase 1b/2a trial was randomised, double-blind and placebo-controlled.
Over 28 days, the drug showed encouraging improvements in cardiac output and ejection fraction, a measure of how much blood the heart pumps with each beat. The company said no tachycardia, arrhythmia, ischaemia or hypotension was observed. Results were published in The Lancet in June.
According to the company, the improvement in ejection fraction was comparable to or greater than improvements reported with established heart failure therapies over considerably longer treatment periods.
The next step: GOAL-HF2
The Series B fully funds GOAL-HF2, a Phase 2b trial that will enrol about 400 patients with chronic advanced HFrEF across 12 countries. The trial design has been agreed with both the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, and regulatory clearance to begin the study has been received. The first participant is expected to be enrolled in the fourth quarter of 2026.
"This €62.5 million Series B, co-led by Novo Holdings and the Ljungström family office, fully funds GOAL-HF2, AC01's 400 patient Phase 2b trial across 12 countries, with a design agreed with the FDA and EMA," said Patrik Strömberg, AnaCardio's chief executive. "This funding round gives us the capital to complete the GOAL-HF2 Phase 2b study and deliver a first-in-class Phase 3-ready asset by 2028."
The study is designed to test whether the early improvements in heart function hold up in a larger patient population and translate into meaningful clinical benefits. Phase 2b trials are often where promising heart failure drugs stumble, because effects seen over a few weeks in small groups do not always persist over longer periods or in more diverse patients, which is why investors place so much weight on this stage.
Investor confidence, at a lower valuation
Novo Holdings' decision to co-lead is a strong endorsement. "Improving cardiac contractility safely remains a major unmet need in heart failure," said Jørgen Søberg Petersen, a senior partner at Novo Holdings. He said the combination of a differentiated mechanism, clinical evidence and a Phase 2b design agreed with regulators underpinned the firm's decision.
The round was, however, completed at a lower valuation than the one implied by previous investments. KDventures, a Nasdaq Stockholm-listed investor that holds a stake in AnaCardio, said it would reduce the carrying value of its holding by about 49.5% as a result, and that its stake would fall to about 2.3% on a fully diluted basis as it did not participate in the round.
That reflects the wider biotech funding environment, in which investors have demanded more favourable terms for mid-stage clinical programmes. A cash runway extending well into 2029, as reported, should give the company enough time to deliver its Phase 2b data.
Why it matters
Cardiovascular disease remains the world's leading cause of death, and heart failure places a heavy burden on health systems through repeated hospital admissions. New treatments that can improve quality of life and reduce hospitalisations for patients with advanced disease would have significant medical and economic impact.
The burden is also rising in countries such as India, where heart disease tends to strike at younger ages than in Western populations. Oral therapies that can be taken at home are particularly valuable in health systems where access to specialist hospital care is limited.
For AnaCardio, GOAL-HF2 is the decisive next step. Positive results by around 2028 would position AC01 for a Phase 3 trial and potentially make the company an attractive partner or acquisition target for larger pharmaceutical groups. For patients with limited options, it offers the prospect of a new kind of heart failure treatment.
