Encare Biotech

Myocardial infarction is caused by an acute blood flow cessation in the heart and is the most life-threatening event of ischemic heart disease. The majority of advances in cardiology are aimed at optimising blood flow restoration to treat myocardial infarction. These advances have resulted in a decrease of mortality, but also in a significant increase in infarct- related complications; more patients survive the initial infarction, but have deteriorated cardiac function. Heart failure is the most severe and common form of infarct-related morbidity. The most important cause for infarct-related complications and heart failure is an improper cardiac repair response, referred to as adverse remodeling. To date, there are no drugs available that prevent adverse remodeling, which creates a large unmet medical need for therapies that improve cardiac repair and prevent complications after myocardial infarction.

EnCare Biotech is a spin-off company of the Laboratory of Experimental Cardiology at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. The company provides a proprietary antibody-based therapeutic drug, ECR-A1, which has shown to be highly effective in preventing adverse remodeling in mice. Furthermore, EnCare Biotech has developed ECR-B1, a set of innovative proprietary biomarkers, to serve as a companion diagnostic tool. Currently, we are applying for a PCT. The next critical step for EnCare Biotech is to select a humanised monoclonal antibody master cell and scale up ECR-A1 for large animal studies prior to IND.