Human iPSC-derived cardiovascular tissues, 3D computational modeling, and biofabrication will define the causal mechanisms behind a leading cause of ischemia in women
Palo Alto, Calif – Greenstone Biosciences, a biotechnology company advancing New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for drug discovery, today announced that it has been selected as a performer in VISIBLE: Women's Heart Disease Revealed, a $55 million program from Wellcome Leap. The project, led by Dr. Paul D. Pang, will build human, sex-specific models of coronary microvascular disease (CMD) and use them to define what causes it.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women. An estimated 100 million women worldwide live with stable chest pain. Each year, about 700,000 women in the United States and Europe undergo invasive coronary angiography and leave without a diagnosis. Many are told their arteries look normal. In up to 70% of these patients, the fault lies in the smallest vessels of the heart. Fewer than 1% are likely to receive the coronary function testing that would reveal it.
CMD is not a single disease. It is a spectrum of endotypes. These include endothelial dysfunction, structural rarefaction, and spasm-like phenotypes. Each can reduce coronary or myocardial flow reserve and leave heart muscle short of oxygen. Yet human, sex-specific models of these mechanisms are largely absent. Without them, CMD remains hard to diagnose and has no targeted therapy.
Greenstone will build human cardiovascular tissues from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from its biobank, supporting the shared mission with Wellcome Leap to advance women’s cardiovascular health. The team will combine these tissues with computational 3D modeling and biofabrication to reproduce the architecture of the coronary microvasculature.
"Wellcome Leap’s program name VISIBLE really says it all," said Dr. Paul D. Pang, Director of Research and Development and Principal Investigator at Greenstone Biosciences. "Once we can see it, we can better diagnose it. Then once we can diagnose it, we can treat it. I’m excited to work towards making a hidden disease visible for millions of women worldwide."
"This disease has stayed invisible because the tools to study it in human tissue did not exist," said Dr. Joseph C. Wu, Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Co-Founder of Greenstone Biosciences. "Patient-derived iPSC models can change that. This award lets Greenstone bring its platform to a condition that affects millions of women and has been overlooked for decades."
The VISIBLE program is jointly funded by Wellcome Leap and Pivotal, with support from the British Heart Foundation. Its goal is to raise the share of women with stable angina who receive effective diagnosis and treatment for CMD from less than 1% to more than 80%. It must do so without raising the risk of missed obstructive coronary artery disease. Greenstone's project sits within the program's work on multiscale, human-relevant models that couple human cell-based systems with computational frameworks to establish causal mechanisms. Wellcome Leap will integrate findings across all twelve teams over the three-year program, which is led by cardiologist Dr. Birgit Vogel.
About Greenstone Biosciences Greenstone Biosciences, Inc. is a biotechnology
company based in Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, California. Greenstone
integrates AI-based drug discovery with clinical genomics and advanced iPSC and
organoid platforms. It maintains the world's largest human iPSC biobank, with
more than 2,500 patient lines spanning diverse diseases, ancestries and genetic
backgrounds. Greenstone has extensive expertise in New Approach Methodologies
(NAMs), advocated by the FDA and NIH, for human-centric therapeutic
development. For more information, visit greenstonebio.com. About Wellcome Leap Wellcome Leap is a US nonprofit founded by the
Wellcome Trust in 2020. It builds bold, unconventional health research programs
and funds them at scale to deliver breakthroughs on accelerated timelines. Leap
has invested more than $250 million in women's health research. For more
information, visit wellcomeleap.org. Media Contact:
Jade Chao, JD, MPH
jadechao@greenstonebio.com
