With $185 million in series A funding and an army of experienced leaders in its ranks, Braveheart Bio is setting off to joust with big names in an emerging heart disease drug arena.
Backed by investors including Forbion, OrbiMed, Enavate Sciences, Fraizer Life Sciences and Andreessen Horowitz, the biotech recently catapulted itself into the increasingly heated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) landscape with a $65 million deal for a selective myosin inhibitor from China's Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals.
Now referred to as BHB-1893, the drug candidate is a potential rival to Bristol Myers Squibb’s Camzyos and Cytokinetics’ aficamten. While Camzyos currently has a choke hold on the commercial market for HCM, Braveheart’s CEO Travis Murdoch, M.D., says the available treatments for the heart disease “leave room for improvement.”
“We see potential for our investigational cardiac myosin inhibitor to a best-in-class molecule that enhances the efficacy, safety and convenience of care for patients and prescribers,” Murdoch said in a Nov. 5 press release, adding that he is “delighted” to lead Braveheart’s “highly talented and expanding team.”
The company’s leadership line-up offers a “rare combination of cardiovascular drug development expertise and a demonstrated track record of building late-stage companies,” as its board director Jasper Bos, Ph.D., put it in the release.
At the helm of the board is Chairman Chris Viehbacher, a well-known biopharma veteran who currently leads Biogen as CEO. In a statement, Viehbacher called Braveheart an “exciting company with an excellent team” that is “positioned well to advance BHB-1893 with rigor and drive."
Murdoch and Viehbacher previously shook hands on Biogen’s $1.15 billion buyout of HI-Bio, an immunology-focused biotech Murdoch founded in 2021.
Murdoch then worked under Viehbacher for a year as the head of Biogen’s West Coat hub before pivoting to Braveheart and rounding up a slew of experienced executives, including HI-Bio's former head of regulatory affairs, Michele Anderson, as chief development officer.
For more than a year, the team searched across the globe for “novel, potentially transformative treatments” before landing on BHB-1893, board director Erez Chimovits explained in the release.
Braveheart plans to initiate late-stage clinical development of the drug next year with the goal of establishing a new standard of care, it said.
Early data presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2025 suggested that BHB-1893 can achieve rapid and clinically meaningful reduction in left ventricular outflow tract gradients, a blood pressure measure that can speak to the severity of an HCM obstruction, within days of treatment initiation for patients with obstructive HCM, according to Braveheart.
HCM is a genetic heart condition that impacts about one in every 500 people in the U.S., causing risks of heart failure, stroke or sudden cardiac death. The disease is marked by an abnormally thick heart muscle, particularly in the left ventricle, which can be linked to overactive myosin protein.
In about two-thirds of patients, the thickened muscle creates a blockage in the heart’s main pumping chamber, a condition referred to as obstructive HCM.
BMS’ 2022 approval for Camzyos made it the first marketed cardiac myosin inhibitor meant to target the source of obstructive HCM. Rival Cytokinetics, meanwhile, is expecting an FDA decision this year for its aficamten, which is expected to put pressure on Camzyos.