Tozaro closes €6.9 million round to scale Smart Polymer platform
Tozaro, a Bedford-based biotech developing polymer tools to reduce the cost of manufacturing cell and gene therapies, has raised €6.9 million (£6 million) in new funding. The round was led by Mercia Ventures, investing via the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II and Mercia’s own capital, alongside existing investors.
The company said the financing will support new commercial partnerships and advance its push to improve manufacturing yields and quality while lowering costs for therapies that can be prohibitively expensive for health systems and patients. The latest raise brings Tozaro’s total funding to €27.2 million (£23.7 million).
Targeting a key bottleneck: manufacturing cost
Jason Slingsby, CEO of Tozaro, said the company’s approach uses high-value polymers to help transform production of “innovative but costly medicines,” adding that reducing manufacturing barriers could expand access to life-changing treatments such as CAR-T therapies and gene therapies for rare diseases.
Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Asset Management, said the extreme cost of production is holding back the growth of biological therapeutics and positioned Tozaro as a platform play that can reduce cost “without shouldering the risk of clinical development of the therapeutic itself.”
How the Smart Polymer approach works
Founded in 2015 and previously known as MIP Discovery, Tozaro uses molecular modelling and machine learning to design stable polymers that bind selectively to gene therapy vectors. The company says its Smart Polymer platform draws on more than 500 chemical groups, enabling exploration of a broader chemical space than traditional protein- or peptide-based approaches.
The technology is being developed for manufacturing lentiviral vectors used in CAR-T production and AAV vectors used in other gene therapies, and has already been tested with manufacturing companies.
Part of a wider European funding trend
The round lands amid continued European investment in cell and gene therapy infrastructure and platforms, as investors look for ways to improve scalability and cost-efficiency across the sector.
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