For Researchers
Research Roadmap
A half-decade of deploying focused research investments, catalyzing bold scientific collaboration, and fueling discovery across the single ventricle research community has brought us to a new era in single ventricle science.
Additional Ventures’ 2026 Research Roadmap builds on that progress and outlines a coordinated strategy to move the field toward a curative standard of care.
The roadmap focuses on restoring what’s missing, stabilizing what’s vulnerable, and building the scientific and clinical infrastructure needed to improve the long-term outlook for patients and families.
2026 Research Roadmap Priorities
The 2026 Research Roadmap is organized around two interconnected domains, each supported by a deeper understanding of single ventricle patient biology.
Domain I: Add Back a Pump
The absence of a second functional pump is the defining physiologic limitation in single ventricle disease.
Restoring that function — through mechanical or biological means — is the most direct path to normalizing circulation.
Domain II: Address Sequelae
Single ventricle and Fontan physiology affect the whole body, driving complications across the lymphatic system, liver, kidney, gut, brain, heart, and beyond.
Understanding and mitigating these effects is essential to improving lifespan and quality of life.
Fundamental Biology
Threaded throughout both domains is the need to understand why outcomes vary so widely among patients — even those with similar anatomy and surgical histories. Understanding these differences is essential to identifying early signals of decline, building better risk models, and advancing more precise, curative strategies.
The Evolution of Our Research Approach
Additional Ventures’ original Research Roadmap helped galvanize the single ventricle research ecosystem around shared priorities and coordinated investment. The 2026 Research Roadmap reflects how far the field has come — and where the greatest opportunities now lie. It sharpens the ambition of the original roadmap, moving the field from broad knowledge gaps toward a more integrated, clearer strategy for repair.
What’s Next
As Additional Ventures works to advance the priorities outlined in the 2026 Research Roadmap through implementation, we also seek partnership across academia, clinical settings, industry, philanthropy, and patient advocacy to do so. We invite interested collaborators to join us in shaping a future defined not by palliation alone, but by the possibility of true physiological restoration.
Single ventricle care is at a pivotal moment, with new hope on the horizon. While we are making great progress, we cannot do this alone. We look forward to continuing to grow the scientific, clinical, and funding community to create an ecosystem to cure this devastating disease.