Platform designed to cut cell and gene therapy production costs attracts €6.9 million for UK startup Tozaro

Tozaro, a Bedford-based company whose ‘Smart Polymer’ technology looks to significantly reduce the cost of life-saving cell and gene therapies, has completed a €6.9 million (£6 million) funding round.

The round was led by Mercia Ventures, investing from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II and from its own funds, alongside other existing investors. It will enable the company to form new commercial partnerships and pursue its mission to open up access to breakthrough gene therapies. This latest round brings the total raised by the company to date to €27.2 million (£23.7 million).

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.”

In related 2025 activity covered by EU-Startups, UK-based EpilepsyGTx (Cambridge) secured €28 million in Series A funding to advance its EPY201 gene therapy for refractory epilepsy into Phase 1/2a trials, marking a notably larger clinical-stage raise in the same national ecosystem as Tozaro.

In Denmark, Fuse Vectors (Copenhagen) raised €4.9 million in pre-Seed funding to develop a cell-free viral vector production platform aimed at improving the scalability and cost-efficiency of gene therapy manufacturing. Meanwhile, Sweden’s BOOST Pharma (Stockholm) secured an additional €3.1 million to progress its stem cell therapy candidate for osteogenesis imperfecta towards clinical development.

Together, these rounds represent approximately €36 million in disclosed funding across adjacent cell and gene therapy technologies in 2025, spanning manufacturing innovation and clinical advancement.

Within this context, Tozaro’s €6.9 million raise reflects continued investor interest in platform technologies designed to address production cost constraints, complementing larger clinical financings and early-stage vector engineering efforts across the UK and wider European BioTech landscape.

Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Asset Management, adds: “The growth of this exciting new generation of biological therapeutics is being held back by the extreme cost of production. Tozaro is developing an approach that will significantly reduce this cost, without shouldering the risk of clinical development of the therapeutic itself. It’s a real privilege to witness the significant commercial progress made over the past year, moving from platform development into meaningful engagement with downstream processing partners and potential customers.”

Founded in 2015, Tozaro (previously known as MIP Discovery) is a BioTech company leveraging molecular modelling and machine learning (ML) to design and develop stable and cost-effective polymers that bind to gene therapy vectors specifically & selectively.

The Smart Polymer platform utilises >500 chemical groups to develop specific binding compounds, compared to traditional technologies using proteins and peptides, which use ca. 20 amino acids. Tozaro is able to mine a huge new chemical space using cost-effective Smart Polymers.

In cancer care, new CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor T-cell) therapies have proven highly effective in treating leukaemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma, but can cost over €425k (£370k) per patient.

Other gene therapies enable rare genetic diseases to be treated for the first time, including some forms of childhood blindness and neurodegenerative conditions such as Huntington’s disease, but can cost over €1.1 million (£1 million) per patient.

Tozaro’s technology has already been tested by a number of manufacturing companies. It is currently being developed for use in the manufacture of lentiviral vectors for the CAR-T treatment, and for AAV (adeno-associated virus) vectors used in other gene therapies.

David Tindall, Senior Investment Manager at the British Business Bank, says: “The Midlands Engine Investment Fund II was established to support the kind of innovation that helps businesses stand out, become market leaders and deliver better solutions to those who need them most. It is inspiring to see Tozaro based in Bedfordshire breaking barriers in the sector and we’re proud to play a role in their growth journey.”

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