When circulatory shock occurs, every minute counts. Triggered by conditions such as severe infection, major burns or trauma, shock leaves the body unable to maintain sufficient blood flow and oxygen supply to vital organs. More than 500,000 people in the EU and the United States are affected each year, with 30-day mortality rates ranging from 30 to 50%. Yet despite advances in intensive care, treatment remains largely supportive, stabilising circulation and organ function rather than targeting the biological mechanisms driving shock.
The new EU-funded CURE-SHOCK project aims to change this by advancing a targeted, biomarker-driven approach to treatment. Coordinated by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and supported with €8 million through Horizon Europe, the project will evaluate the safety and efficacy of Invobenitug, a novel monoclonal antibody developed by German biotech company 4TEEN4 Pharmaceuticals, in patients with septic, burn and traumatic shock.
At the heart of the approach is circulating dipeptidyl peptidase 3 (cDPP3), an enzyme released into the bloodstream following cell damage and associated with cardiovascular dysfunction and organ failure. Invobenitug is designed to neutralise excessive cDPP3 activity. Combined with rapid cDPP3 testing to identify patients most likely to benefit, CURE-SHOCK will investigate this precision medicine approach in a multicentre clinical trial across Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
Where public funding meets private biotech investment
CURE-SHOCK is particularly interesting from an innovation perspective because it starts with a technology that has already progressed well beyond early-stage research. Invobenitug is in clinical development at 4TEEN4 Pharmaceuticals, which recently secured more than €64 million in Series C financing to further advance its clinical development programme. CURE-SHOCK adds another important element to this pathway: public European research funding enables clinical and academic partners to join forces with the biotech company and investigate the treatment in a broader international setting.
For EURICE, the project therefore complements our growing portfolio of health research projects with a collaboration operating at an advanced stage of the innovation pathway – where scientific evidence, clinical validation and commercial development increasingly converge.
“CURE-SHOCK is a great example of how public research funding and private investment can complement each other in moving promising innovations towards clinical application. Our role goes beyond communicating the research: by engaging relevant stakeholders and considering dissemination and exploitation from the outset, we want to help create the connections that will matter if robust project results are to translate into future clinical practice and wider uptake,” highlights Jakob Haard, Head of the EURICE Berlin office.
The project’s potential has also been recognised with the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Seal, awarded by the European Commission to projects contributing to Europe’s strategic technological priorities. For CURE-SHOCK, it underlines the project’s relevance for European bioresilience, technological sovereignty and preparedness for critical health threats.
Over the coming years, EURICE will work alongside the clinical, academic and industry partners to connect the project with relevant clinical, innovation and policy communities – helping ensure that new evidence generated within CURE-SHOCK reaches the stakeholders who can take it further.
Learn more about the project on the CURE-SHOCK website.