Haya raises US $65M to advance RNA-driven heart failure therapy

SWITZERLAND – Haya Therapeutics has raised US $65 million in a Series A funding round to accelerate the clinical development of its experimental heart failure drug, HTX-001.

The funding will also support the expansion of Haya’s proprietary RNA-guided drug discovery platform, which targets the “dark genome,” the 98% of human DNA that doesn’t code for proteins but plays a key role in regulating genes.

Led by Earlybird Venture Capital and Sofinnova Partners, the round also attracted backing from Eli Lilly, +ND Capital, ATHOS, LifeLink Ventures, and Alexandria Venture Investments.

Previous investors including Apollo Health Ventures, BERNINA Bioinvest, and 4see ventures also participated.

HTX-001, a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) therapy, is set to enter clinical trials with an initial focus on treating non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (nHCM), a form of heart failure.

In parallel, Haya plans to grow its therapeutic pipeline to target other chronic conditions such as obesity, pulmonary fibrosis, and age-related diseases.

According to CEO and co-founder Samir Ounzain, the funding affirms confidence in Haya’s mission to tackle disease at its root by reprogramming faulty cell states into healthy ones.

“We’re excited to push past conventional drug development by focusing on regulatory elements of the genome,” he said.

Haya’s platform combines advanced computational biology, machine learning, and multimodal functional genomics to decode regulatory elements in the genome.

This enables the discovery of novel RNA-based drug targets that can modulate how cells behave, shifting the approach from treating symptoms to targeting the drivers of disease at the molecular level.

This is not Haya’s first big collaboration. In September 2024, Eli Lilly entered a deal with the company worth up to US $1 billion, aiming to discover RNA-based therapies for metabolic diseases like obesity.