UK Startup Tozaro Raises €6.9M Funding To Cut Gene Therapy Costs

The round was led by Mercia Ventures, drawing on the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II and its own capital, alongside participation from existing investors.

The new funding will support Tozaro in forming commercial partnerships and advancing its mission to expand access to breakthrough gene therapies. With this round, the company has now raised a total of €27.2 million (£23.7 million) to date.

Founded in 2015, Tozaro (formerly MIP Discovery) is a biotech company harnessing molecular modeling and machine learning (ML) to design stable, cost-effective polymers that bind to gene therapy vectors with high specificity.

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Its Smart Polymer platform explores more than 500 chemical groups to create targeted binding compounds, far surpassing traditional protein- and peptide-based technologies, which rely on roughly 20 amino acids. This approach allows Tozaro to tap into a vast new chemical space with cost-efficient polymers.

In cancer care, emerging CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor T-cell) therapies have shown remarkable efficacy against leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma, but treatments can exceed €425k (£370k) per patient. Other gene therapies are now enabling treatments for rare genetic diseases including certain forms of childhood blindness and neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington’s disease though costs can surpass €1.1 million (£1 million) per patient.

Tozaro’s technology has already been tested by multiple manufacturing partners and is currently being developed for the production of lentiviral vectors for CAR-T therapies and AAV (adeno-associated virus) vectors used in other gene therapies.

Jason Slingsby, CEO of Tozaro, says: “Tozaro is leading the way in using high-value polymers to transform production of some of the world’s most innovative but costly medicines, and our technology is attracting global interest. By improving manufacturing yields and quality while reducing costs, we can remove the barriers and enable more patients to access these life-changing cell therapies.”

About Tozaro

Tozaro is creating innovative reagents to transform the development and manufacturing of viral vectors for cell and gene therapies. By combining chemistry and biology, its Smart Polymer technology enhances analytical and purification processes, driving down costs and helping make advanced therapies more efficient, scalable, and accessible to patients worldwide.helping make advanced therapies more efficient, scalable, and accessible to patients worldwide.