Kardigan, a heart health company modernizing cardiovascular drug development, signed a 21,489-square-foot lease at 506 Carnegie Center, a 280,000-square-foot class-A office complex in Princeton, owned by Boston Properties.
JLL Senior Vice President Vinny DiMeglio represented Kardigan in the lease transaction. The landlord was represented in-house. JLL’s New Jersey Workplace Strategy team led by Senior Vice President Kimberly Smith worked with Kardigan to identify a dynamic new office environment that will align with the company’s business goals and evolving employee needs.
“We collaborated across the JLL platform to provide Kardigan a suite of services to secure the ideal home in a location that supports the company’s remarkable growth,” DiMeglio said. “This property delivers on every aspect of Kardigan’s vision for their first East Coast office.”
Fresh from a $300 million funding round, Kardigan will establish its first presence on the East Coast as part of its plans to develop multiple targeted treatments, in parallel, to bring people with cardiovascular diseases closer to the cures they deserve.
“Opening our first East Coast location in the heart of New Jersey’s broader life sciences hub is an important milestone for Kardigan,” Tassos Gianakakos, co-founder and CEO of Kardigan said. “506 Carnegie Center will provide our team with best-in-class space and access to industry-leading talent for further expansion as we continue to advance our late-stage portfolio of disease modifying medicines.”
Kardigan was founded in San Francisco in 2023 by Tassos Gianakakos, Jay Edelberg and Robert McDowell after they sold the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company they started in 2012 to Bristol Myers Squibb for $13.1 billion. The trio discovered and developed the first cardiac myosin inhibitor, a new class of medications that reduce the force with which the heart muscle contracts and can improve outcomes for irregular heartbeats or sudden cardiac events.
The company’s recent fundraise will be used to advance Kardigan’s focus on areas of most unmet need in cardiology, starting with disease opportunities and patient segments that are resistant or poorly managed on current therapies, including primary and secondary cardiomyopathies that lead to heart failure.
Located along the prestigious Route 1 corridor, 506 Carnegie Center is part of a multi-award winning, mixed-use master-planned campus of Class A suburban office buildings along with unmatched on-site amenities both inside and out. Enjoying a prime location midway between New York and Philadelphia, the 560-acre campus offers tenants a central greenway with jogging and walking paths, on-site dining and conference facilities, athletic facilities, gazebos, sculpture gardens, ponds and an amphitheater. The property features an on-site hotel, post office, bank, childcare facility and heliport.
The region is known for its concentration of companies focused on life sciences and for its leading educational institutions, including Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Rider University and the College of New Jersey.
