Nanosyrinx raises £6.2m to validate drug delivery platform

The financing round was co-led by incoming Octopus Ventures and existing Dutch investor M Ventures (Amsterdam), the corporate venture capital arm of Merck. Previous investors BioCity (We are Pioneer Group) and the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) joined the funding round along with  IQ Capital and Jonathan Milner. The round was significantly oversubscribed with high demand both from existing and from new investors.

NanoSyrinx can engineer protein nanosyringes, a cell-selective non-viral peptide and protein delivery system. Targeted delivery of therapeutics is an important solution to improve efficacy and minimise potential adverse side effects of  treatments. According to NanoSyrinx, its platform overcomes a number of challenges experienced in intracellular delivery such as cell specificity, payload limitations and manufacturing complexities.

The company said it will use the proceeds to validate its technology across a range of therapeutic indications and novel modalities. Proof-of-concept studies both for in vivo active pharmaceutical delivery and ex vivo cell engineering will be undertaken to better understand the optimal clinical targets and to build a pipeline of programmes to take forward in the next phase of growth.

NanoSyrinx Ltd was founded in 2020 to develop a fully customisable genetic platform that selectively delivers peptide and protein payloads directly to the cytosol of targeted cells. It was first identified by the Waterfield Lab based at Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick.

NanoSyrinx is an emerging biotechnology company developing a novel cell engineering system for targeted delivery of therapeutic proteins and peptides direct to the cytosol. NanoSyrinx was co-founded in 2020 by Dr. Healey, Dr. Waterfield and Dr. Hapeshi to commercialise the team’s research at the University of Warwick’s Medical School. Dr Stephen Taylor, previously an SVP at Fujifilm Diosynth, has joined the company as Chairman, along with Dr. Jane Dancer, NED, whose past roles include CBO at F-Star and Director of Business Development at MedImmune.