Investors know when to go bananas!
That is not to say that deals were not being done, but anecdotal reports suggest that the bar has been raised by investors in both the UK and Europe.
Any pessimism around funding and investment has not, however, stopped the East of England, and Cambridge in particular, from doing what it excels at: innovating. Some of the world’s brightest minds continue to tackle the world’s biggest problems on a day-to-day basis. The green shoots of this innovation are evident around the city and region in the new companies being founded and built in the various incubators, accelerators and science parks.
The technical and sectorial diversity of such innovation is immense. From ClimateTech to DeepTech, with the whole range of life science solutions in medicines, genetics and medical devices in between. However, one field of innovation that is particularly strong in the region, but often gets overlooked in favour of more “glamorous” headline-grabbers is AgriTech.
A flagship for this field is Norwich-based Tropic Biosciences, whose non-browning banana was recently named in TIME’s 2025 Best Inventions list in the food and drink category and will be launching at least in the United States and Canada in 2026.
This non-browning banana has the potential to revolutionise the food industry because it stays firm and yellow after peeling and slicing, opening new avenues for its inclusion in fruit salads and smoothies while retaining the same taste, texture and nutritional characteristics as a standard Cavendish banana.
The invention is based on switching off the gene encoding the enzyme responsible for browning via gene-editing and we have worked closely with Tropic to secure patents and plant variety rights that protect this innovation.
Although gene-edited plants are slowly becoming more mainstream, plant variety right offices around the world do not yet have much experience in dealing with them, so seeking and securing plant variety right protection for this non-browning banana in a wide range of jurisdictions has come with significant challenges that we have successfully navigated.
However, non-browning bananas are only one of the fruits of Tropic Biosciences’ labours. Their groundbreaking GEiGS® technology uses universal gene editing tools such as CRISPR to edit a host’s own non-coding genes and redirect their silencing activity towards any desired target gene.
This broad platform technology is also patented and has a huge range of potential applications. In 2025 alone, Tropic Biosciences entered into agreements with Bejo Zaden B.V. to develop durable disease resistance in carrots and with British Sugar to tackle disease in sugar beet in a sustainable way, as well as expanding their existing collaboration with Genus Plc to improve porcine and bovine genetics.
Sticking with cattle, Cambridge-based Antler Bio’s EpiHerd system is transforming dairy farming by increasing yields and quality while promoting healthier cows. EpiHerd can enable farmers to make informed decisions which bring a variety of benefits from enhanced fertility and resilience to higher milk production, all based on understanding how environmental conditions affect the genes of their cattle.
Antler Bio has partnered with over 100 farms and has already achieved standout results on milk yield and quality. This success helped the company secure €3.6m of investment in June 2025 to scale their technology. We are proud to have been involved in helping Antler Bio to protect biomarkers that underlie their gene expression technology for dairy herds. We look forward to celebrating similar achievements and milestones with our clients in 2026 and beyond.
J A Kemp’s Cambridge team were also successful in their own right, collecting the IP & IT Firm of the Year award at the Cambridgeshire Law Society’s Legal Excellence Awards for the third time in four years.
