Bactobio Raises £6 Million To Discover Novel Antimicrobials

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#agritech--Bactobio Ltd (‘Bactobio’ or ‘the Company’), a biotechnology company uncovering safer and greener antimicrobial solutions from previously unexplored microbes, announced today that it has closed an oversubscribed £6 million bridge financing round. The financing was led by Bridford Group, with support from angel investors Peder Holk Nielsen (Former CEO and President of Novozymes) and Hugh Grant (Former Chairman and CEO of Monsanto). New investors included the founders of the London-based fintech unicorn Lendable and Entangle Group.

Bactobio is a world leader in capturing and exploring novel biodiversity.

The Company’s unique combination of synthetic biology, next-generation sequencing and machine learning gives exclusive access to a growing library of thousands of previously unscreened microbes.

An interdisciplinary approach then enables a thorough exploration of the potential chemical space, creating unmatched opportunity for new discovery across markets in healthcare, agriculture and bio-derived chemicals.

Today’s announced funds will be used to advance Bactobio’s pioneering discovery pipeline and enable characterisation of the next generation of antimicrobial solutions.

“With our 2021 fundraise we built a complete end-to-end compound discovery pipeline. Today’s raise supports our continued drive towards automation and data-driven science that will help turn our captured biodiversity into commercial products,” said Dr Daniel Hansen, CEO and Founder of Bactobio. “We are immensely proud to receive such a high level of new and continued support from high calibre investors.”

Dr Mark Wilkinson, CSO at Bactobio, commented “It is estimated that fewer than 3% of the potential natural products encoded in nature have been identified to-date. Bactobio’s bioactivity-driven but target-agnostic approach lets nature do the work and lead us towards compounds which have been unimaginable and previously inaccessible to drug discovery efforts. Funds from this round will allow us to dig deeper into this previously untapped bioresource.”

About Bactobio

Bactobio is a London-based biotechnology company using breakthrough technologies in synthetic biology, next-generation sequencing and machine learning to cultivate the 99% of microbes which have previously been unculturable. Bactobio’s exclusive access to the biggest bioresource in life allows them to discover novel chemical and biological products across the pharmaceutical, agricultural and bioderived-chemical sectors. Their first goal is to help solve the growing antimicrobial resistance crisis. For more information visit www.bacto.bio. Connect with us at www.twitter.com/bactobio and www.linkedin.com/company/bactobio.

Helena Francis
Head of Business Development, Bactobio Ltd
Helena.francis@bacto.bio