Cyclana Bio has closed its £5m pre-seed funding round to develop its platform and functional disease models that are dedicated to revolutionising women’s health through tissue level therapeutics – with endometriosis treatment discovery first in line.
Endometriosis is a chronic and debilitating lifelong condition that affects one in ten 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.
“Our mission at Cyclana is not just to close the gender health gap, but propel women to the forefront of drug discovery,” said Léa Wenger, chief executive and co-founder of Cyclana Bio. “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.
“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.”
Cyclana Bio has demonstrated the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in endometriosis, where disregulation 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 startup is focused on building whole tissue models of disease, harnessing menstrual fluid and lab-based modelling. It is hoped this approach will uncover early biomarkers of disease and identify novel targets for drug development.
“Our goal is not just to develop new treatments, but to change the framework of biomedical discovery itself,” said Kevin Chalut, CSO and cofounder at Cyclana Bio.
“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.”
The pre-seed round was co-led by NfX and Eka VC and included participation from Cocoa VC, Wilbe and angel investors.
