Berg, a Boston-based biopharmaceutical company, and the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine are extending a collaboration to battle cardiac dysfunction and heart failure. According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease is the leading global cause of death, accounting for 17.3 million deaths per year, a number that is expected to grow to more than 23.6 million by 2030.

The collaboration will utilize artificial intelligence to unlock new methods to battle the disease as there is a critical unmet need for markers for early detection of cardiac dysfunction and heart failure.

“Through this collaboration with Berg, which merges the applications of technology and medicine, we expect to uncover novel insights into diseased environments as we work to reduce and further eradicate conditions such as cardiac dysfunction and heart failure,” said Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., dean of the university’s Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine and CEO of UHealth—the University of Miami health system.

U Miami will provide Berg access to clinical tissue samples obtained with patients’ consent from its Miller School of Medicine. This is the first time the university has given a private research company access to these samples. These key assets are comprised of healthy and diseased cohorts.

“Berg will utilize its artificial intelligence-based Interrogative Biology platform to analyze the tissues in an effort to uncover novel biomarkers for the prevention of cardiac dysfunction and heart failure,” said Rangaprasad Sarangarajan, Ph.D., chief scientific officer and co-founder of Berg Biosystems. “This will enable stratification of patients based on disease onset and progression, and to facilitate timely clinical intervention to improve patient outcomes.”

Berg’s Interrogative Biology platform previously has produced clinical assets in cancer and metabolic diseases, as well as diagnostics assets and markers in diseases including prostate cancer.