• Co-led by NfX and Eka VC, investors include Cocoa VC, Wilbe, and Angel investors
• Investment will support development of whole tissue-based platform for identification of druggable targets and scaling of observational clinical trial

Cyclana Bio, a biotechnology company pioneering tissue-level approaches to women’s health, today announced the close of a £5M pre-seed funding round, co-led by NfX and Eka VC, and including Cocoa VC, Wilbe, and Angel investors. The investment will enable Cyclana Bio to develop functional disease models and its platform, dedicated to revolutionising women’s health through tissue level therapeutics, starting with the discovery of treatments for endometriosis.

Endometriosis is a chronic and debilitating lifelong condition that affects 1 in 10 women worldwide. Despite its prevalence, the disease physiology of endometriosis remains poorly understood and treatment options remain limited. Cyclana Bio is addressing a need to better serve millions of women by developing physiologically relevant models and utilising AI-driven multi-scale data integration to enable the discovery of druggable targets to improve treatment outcomes.

Cyclana Bio has demonstrated the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in endometriosis, where dysregulation of the ECM causes inflammation and loss of tissue function. Until now, drug development strategies to treat endometriosis have focused on intracellular mechanisms, failing to target the interaction between cells and the ECM, and have resulted in sub-optimal treatment efficacy. The Company is focused on building whole tissue models of disease, harnessing menstrual fluid, received from donations from an observational clinical trial, and lab-based modelling to uncover early biomarkers of disease and identify novel targets for drug development. Initially focused on endometriosis, Cyclana Bio’s whole tissue-based methodology represents a promising approach to address other underserved chronic inflammatory diseases that share similar tissue-level mechanisms.

“Our mission at Cyclana is not just to close the gender health gap but propel women to the forefront of drug discovery. We are redefining how therapies are developed, starting with the basic science, by zooming out and studying disease at the level where it truly emerges: the tissue itself,” said Dr. Léa Wenger, CEO and Co-Founder of Cyclana Bio. “By raising venture capital as our first source of financing, we are building a model with the consumer, the patient, at the centre. We now have not only the privilege but also the responsibility to generate the best pipeline to bring new treatments to the clinic.”

“Our goal is not just to develop new treatments, but to change the framework of biomedical discovery itself,” Prof. Kevin Chalut, CSO and Co-Founder, Cyclana Bio, added. “By starting with women’s health, we’re addressing one of the greatest unmet needs in medicine. In doing so, we will not only cure a debilitating disease many women suffer from, we will also set the stage for a broader transformation in how we understand and treat chronic disease.”

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