London-based Neobe raises €6.1 million to engineer bacteria that break down barriers protecting cancer tumours

Neobe Therapeutics, a London-based bio-engineering company, has raised €6.1 million ($6.8 million/£5 million) in a Seed round to accelerate development of engineered bacteria that break down the physical barriers preventing cancer drugs from reaching solid tumours and killing cancer cells.

The round was led by ARC Ventures, with participation from Faber, Macmillan Ventures, the venture investment arm of Macmillan Cancer Support, Proven Connect, and Empirical Ventures, along with follow-on investment from pre-Seed investor 2048 Ventures. This brings the company’s total funding to date to more than €9.4 million ($10.5 million/£7.9 million). 

Dr. Pedro Correa de Sampaio, co-founder and CEO, Neobe Therapeutics, said, “Several treatments that can cure cancer already exist, but in far too many patients they simply cannot get to where they are needed. I’m delighted to be working with investors that share our vision of making untreatable cancers curable, and excited to move our platform towards clinical trials.”

Founded in 2021 by Dr. Correa de Sampaio and Dr. Annelise Soulier and based at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, Neobe is working towards making untreatable cancers curable. 

According to the company, although immunotherapy and other new drugs have transformed cancer treatment, they don’t work for all patients. These failures are often physical rather than biological: a dense, fibrous matrix around the tumour creates a wall that immune cells and cancer drugs simply cannot cross.

Neobe claims its solution is to engineer harmless strains of common bacteria into programmable living medicines. Once injected, they travel specifically to tumours and release enzymes that dissolve the surrounding matrix, effectively breaking through the wall and allowing immune cells or other drugs to enter and eliminate the cancer cells, the UK startup explained. 

“The idea of using pathogenic bacteria to treat cancer dates back to the early 20th century. But, until now, nobody has been able to engineer harmless bacteria to safely home in on tumours and break down these barriers to infiltration and help cancer treatments become more effective,” the company mentioned in the press release. 

In a 2026 paper published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Neobe collaborated with researchers at the University of Cyprus and Barts Cancer Institute in London to test the effect of their engineered bacterial platform technology on a model of triple-negative breast cancer that did not respond to a common cocktail of immunotherapy drugs.

Neobe reported that the team found that a single dose of engineered bacteria produced complete tumour regression in response to the same treatment in one of the models tested. When tested with the same cancer months later, no further tumours developed, suggesting that a lasting cancer-fighting immune memory had formed, says the startup. 

The company has recently appointed immuno-oncology expert Dr. Laura Chow as Chief Medical Officer to oversee clinical development towards a first-in-human trial, which will be funded by an additional tranche of the current Seed round.

Joseph Korff, Founder of Arc Ventures, said, “We are excited to back Neobe Therapeutics’ differentiated approach to overcoming the physical barriers created by dense tumour matrices. Assets derived from Neobe’s platform will improve the efficacy of cancer therapies and extend their benefits to more patients.”

This funding will enable Neobe to advance its lead programme, NEO22, through preclinical studies to an IND filing in 2028, and strengthen the leadership team as the company moves toward the clinic.

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