Neobe raises $6.8m to engineer bacteria that dissolve the walls around solid tumours

The Stevenage-based company says the funding will carry its lead programme, NEO22, through preclinical work to a regulatory filing in 2028, with a first-in-human trial to be financed by a later tranche of the same round.

Neobe Therapeutics, a British synthetic biology company developing bacteria engineered to break down the dense tissue that shields solid tumours from cancer drugs, has closed a seed round of $6.8 million, or about £5 million. The company announced the financing on 10 November. It was led by ARC Ventures, with Faber, Macmillan Ventures, Proven Connect, Empirical Ventures and strategic angel investors taking part, alongside a follow-on investment from pre-seed backer 2048 Ventures. Neobe says the round brings its total funding to more than $10.5 million.

The money is directed at a single programme. Neobe plans to take its lead candidate, NEO22, through preclinical studies to an investigational new drug application in 2028. A further tranche of the same seed round is expected to pay for the first trial in humans. The company has appointed Laura Chow, an immuno-oncology specialist, as chief medical officer to oversee that clinical development.

The problem Neobe is addressing is mechanical rather than molecular. Checkpoint inhibitors and other immunotherapies have changed the treatment of several cancers, but most patients with solid tumours derive no benefit. One reason is the extracellular matrix, the fibrous scaffold of collagen and hyaluronic acid that gives tissue its structure. In tumours it is more heavily cross-linked than in healthy tissue, stiff enough to keep immune cells and drug molecules out. Degrading that matrix systemically is not a realistic option, since the same proteins hold together skin, lung and heart.

Neobe’s answer is to deliver the degrading enzymes from inside the tumour. The company engineers non-pathogenic, commensal-derived bacterial strains that naturally accumulate in the low-oxygen interiors of tumours. Genetic circuits act as a switch: the bacteria produce and secrete enzymes only once they have colonised the tumour, which is intended to confine the effect to the target and avoid systemic toxicity. Co-founder and chief executive Pedro Correa de Sampaio, a cancer biologist who worked on tumour stroma at MD Anderson after a doctorate at Cambridge, has described the approach as a biological Trojan horse.

The strongest published evidence for the platform appeared this year. In a paper in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, accepted in April and published in the journal’s November issue, researchers at the University of Cyprus and Barts Cancer Institute in London, working with Correa de Sampaio and co-founder Annelise Soulier, tested an engineered Escherichia coli strain carrying a hypoxia-inducible promoter driving hyaluronidase. In mouse models of triple-negative breast cancer, a single dose degraded hyaluronan, reduced tumour stiffness, restored blood vessel function and improved the efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors by allowing immune cells in. The authors also used machine learning to identify biomarkers that predicted which tumours would respond.

Neobe says that in one of the models tested, a single dose of the bacteria produced complete tumour regression when the same immunotherapy combination was given, and that re-introducing the cancer months later produced no new tumours, which the company takes as evidence of durable immune memory. That rechallenge result is not described in the published abstract and has not been independently verified.

The company has not disclosed which enzyme or indication NEO22 targets, though earlier preclinical work has focused on triple-negative breast cancer, colorectal and pancreatic tumours.

Neobe was founded in 2021 by Correa de Sampaio and Soulier, a microbiologist and immunologist who is chief scientific officer, through a venture-creation partnership between Deep Science Ventures and Cancer Research Horizons, the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK. It raised £520,000 in pre-seed funding led by Discovery Park Ventures, then $2.34 million in early 2024 from Pioneer Group and 2048 Ventures alongside existing backers, with a non-dilutive grant from Innovate UK’s Cancer Therapeutics fund. The board is chaired by Keith Blundy, formerly chief executive of Cancer Research Technology and STORM Therapeutics.

Two of the new investors are charity vehicles. Macmillan Ventures is the investment arm of Macmillan Cancer Support; Proven Connect is the investment arm of Prostate Cancer Research. Felix Litzkow, who heads Macmillan Ventures, said the fund works with people living with cancer to shape future care and wanted to remove the barrier standing between a cancer and a treatment that could cure it.

Bacterial cancer therapy has a long and uneven clinical record, and no live biotherapeutic of this type has yet been approved. Neobe’s first test in patients is at least two years away.