Scientists in the United Kingdom have won funding for the development of a new anticoagulant medication which may prevent blood clots without causing bleeding.  To date, no other medication has been able to achieve that goal.

The funding comes from Index Ventures which said it will invest $11 million in XO1, a company set up to develop the drugs, according to Reuters.  Bloomberg reports Index Ventures was also an early investor in the file sharing service, Dropbox.

Working with Johnson and Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline, the new company is developing a synthetic antibody called Ichorcumab created by scientists at the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke Hospital.  The idea came after Dr. Trevor Baglin observed a patient in her fifties with a potentially fatal head injury.  She could not clot, but she also had no major bleeding issues.  Doctors said she had a unique antibody which they have now synthesized.

Once the patient was stable and out of danger, the doctors said they knew they had stumbled on something big.  Dr. Jim Huntingdon is a professor at the Cambridge Institute who helped to make the synthetic version .  “This antibody can deliver a high degree of anticoagulation without increased bleeding; we’ve never seen that before.”

Anticoagulant medications, such as warfarin, are given to patients to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes.  However, the drugs come with the risk of uncontrolled bleeding, which itself can be fatal, according to Huntingdon.  Ichorcumab can change that.  “We’ve never seen anything like this before.  It was a total freak.  We could see at once that it was a one in a billion antibody,” Huntingdon said in an interview with Business Weekly.

Dr. David Grainger, interim chief executive of XO1 and venture partner at Index Ventures, shares Huntingdon’s enthusiasm. “This is the most exciting drug candidate I have seen in 20 years in the industry,” he said in a press release. “It has the potential to save millions of lives.” Researchers in the field say an anticoagulant which does not clot is the “holy grail” in their field.

The new anticoagulant was tested in mice who had their tails clipped.  Huntingdon told Bloomberg the mice did not bleed as much as expected.  Humans may have to wait a bit longer for the drug however.  XO1 hopes to begin clinical trials within two years.

In the United States, cardiovascular disease accounts for one in three death, according to the Centers for Disease Control.  One in 19 Americans will die of a stroke each year.