“British startup Closed Loop Medicine (CLM), a therapeutics and healthtech startup, has secured an approx. €275K COVID-19 Innovate UK Continuity Funding award to support its ongoing clinical research programme previously secured through the Innovate UK Precision Medicine Accelerator.
Founded in 2017, Closed Loop Medicine were awarded the Innovate UK Precision Medicine Accelerator in 2019 to develop a precision drug and digital therapy package for patients with high blood pressure, with the next stage of the project being to enter into clinical studies in April this year. The study is being run in partnership with the William Harvey Clinical Research Centre (WHCRC), Queen Mary University of London part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at Barts (BRC).
The COVID-19 pandemic saw a nationwide pause and review of clinical trials and as such CLM’s study was placed on hold as the pandemic broke out. During the early stages of the pandemic research highlighted the potential for a link between COVID-19 mortality and high blood pressure. This has now been reinforced through a recent Nature publication led by Ben Goldacre and Liam Smeeth, that analysed 17 million medical records to show that there is a link between COVID-19 mortality and patients with high blood pressure. The paper calls for more research on this connection.”