Broad Institute and Bayer expand cardiovascular alliance

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Bayer announce a five year expansion of their cardiovascular alliance. The Cardiometabolic Risk partnership leverages insights from human genetics to help create new cardiovascular therapies.

First launched in 2015, the program began as a recognition that while a majority of cardiovascular disease can be associated with lifestyle factors such as tobacco consumption, diet, and level of physical activity, genomics can influence an individual’s predisposition to cardiovascular disease, age of onset, and severity. The expansion of this collaboration goes beyond genomics and will include a focus on metabolic risks in cardiovascular disease, such as liver disease.

“We are excited to extend our collaboration with the Broad Institute for another five years to jointly explore how genetic variants are relevant for certain cardiovascular diseases and how this can be leveraged to find and develop new treatments,” said Jörg Möller, Head of Global R&D at Bayer. “The Bayer-Broad collaboration is an outstanding example of how collaboration brings together complementary strengths and how innovative and novel concepts of partnership between pharmaceutical industry and academic research partners can drive medical innovation.”

“I am delighted that Broad and Bayer are continuing this extraordinary collaboration in cardiovascular research,’ said Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute. “Bayer’s deep expertise in cardiovascular therapeutics and Broad’s knowledge of genomics and biology have established a model for how public/industry partnerships can advance novel therapy for patients. Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard over the first five years to enable the continued collaboration.”

This expanded alliance builds on a number of existing partnerships between Broad Institute and Bayer. These include the Precision Cardiology Lab and the oncology program.