Shortlist unveiled for 2025 Business Weekly Awards
A rich vein of brilliance runs through every conceivable sector of business represented in this pantheon, presenting judges with the most challenging decisions ever faced in the Awards.
The categories for this year’s Awards are: Startup of the Year; Cambridge Judge Graduate Business of the Year; Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence Award; Disruptive Technology; The Pathfinder Award; Technology Scale-up; Life Science Scale-up; Life Science Innovation; International Trade Champion; Collaboration of the Year; Quoted Company of the Year; Female Founder in AI; Sustainability Champion; AI Company of the Year; Deal of the Year.
From all entrants an overall Business of the Year will be chosen in addition to a Champion of Champions accolade which will be presented to one of our Hall of Fame companies. Stretching back to the first Business Weekly Awards in 1990, the Hall of Fame includes Abcam, Arm, AVEVA, Bicycle Therapeutics, British Sugar, Cambridge Antibody Technology (acquired by AstraZeneca), CSR (acquired by Qualcomm), Darktrace, Domino, Frontier Developments, Horizon Discovery (now Revvity Inc), IQGeo, Paragraf, Quantinuum, Ryanair, Sepura, Treatt and Xaar.
SHORTLISTED COMPANIES
1956 Individuals (SKC Games Studio)
1956 Individuals is transforming customer engagement with advanced, ethically designed AI-driven characters that are both empathetic and engaging – attracting global attention with a product ahead of the market. The company’s approach positions AI as an enabler, not a creator, ensuring full control over character design, domain expertise and data integrity. By harnessing big data responsibly, 1956 Individuals delivers hyper-personalised experiences while enhancing operational efficiencies. This disruptive technology empowers brands to build deeper, more meaningful connections. With a rapidly growing international presence, 1956 Individuals is redefining AI-driven interactions.
Alchemab
Alchemab’s platform uses state-of-the-art machine learning and AI to analyse the complexities of the human immune response and identify antibodies that are uniquely associated with resilience to untreatable diseases.
In June, Alchemab announced it could receive up to $415 million from Eli Lilly and Company following a landmark first deal of its kind for the startup. The prospective haul comes through a licensing agreement for ATLX-1282, Alchemab’s first-in-class IND-ready programme for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative conditions. The mega-deal builds on a separate discovery collaboration pact with Lilly revealed in January 2025 to discover, develop and commercialise up to five novel therapeutic candidates for ALS.
AnthroTek
Imagine surgeons training without cadavers, medical device manufacturers with high fidelity device testing rigs and robots capable of sensing human touch, or movie prosthetics indistinguishable from real skin. AnthroTek is making these scenarios a reality.
Founded less than a year ago by entrepreneur Nazmus Tareque and distinguished materials scientist Dr Raoul Peltier, AnthroTek has rapidly evolved from a garage venture into a vibrant company occupying 350 sq m of specialised laboratories and workshops in Cambridge and Newmarket. It recently clinched £950,000 in seed funding at a pre-money valuation of £10.5 million. The company projects this valuation will rise to around £12m on completion of an additional £550k tranche expected within the next 12 months.
AnthroTek plans to leverage its fresh capital to deepen strategic partnerships with global healthcare providers, robotics pioneers and major entertainment studios.
Arecor
Quoted company Arecor’s proprietary technology enables development of superior products with enhanced properties that improve care and outcomes – best exemplified by its diabetes portfolio of novel insulins to catalyse the next generation of miniaturised longer-wear insulin pumps. Arecor is also using its formulation and R & D know-how to develop a novel technology platform for the oral delivery of peptides, an increasingly important drug class that remains mostly restricted to injectables.
Arecor’s partnering with pharma and medtech goes from strength to strength with three collaborations already in 2025 bringing a total pre-license deal value of >£1million and significant upside potential from future licensing.
Bango
AIM-quoted Bango revolutionised the digital world when it introduced its online payments technology to mobile phone users across the globe. The company has since pioneered the biggest subscriptions-bundling marketplace in the world with 4.5 billion customers in 75 countries and a total digital spend of $1.4 trillion.
In May, Bango unveiled a new licensing agreement with Optimum, a leading US telecommunications provider, operated by Altice USA. Through the collaboration, Optimum customers can access compelling subscription bundles, powered by the Digital Vending Machine® (DVM™) from Bango.
BioTryp Therapeutics
BioTryp is developing novel antibiofilm therapies to revolutionise how we treat bacterial infections, starting with urinary tract infections. BioTryp was spun out from the University of Cambridge in 2024, based on more than eight years of research funded by over £1m in grants. During the past year, BioTryp has raised a £300k pre-seed round, won two grants from Innovate UK and BBSRC, and won multiple awards including the Angel Prize (2025) and the Hellings Prize (2024) at the Trinity Bradfield prize events, and the Start-up category prize at Santander X Global Challenge | Innovation-in-Healthcare.
Boone
Boone provides completely bespoke nutritional advice for families when they scan products or their food shop receipts, for free. Working closely with Quadram & UEA (AI), it can provide realtime food consumption data – which can then be aligned to qualitative food science work to support research and drive broader changes in our food system to make it more healthy, more sustainable with a key goal of reversing poor diet related outcomes both in the UK and across the world.
Cambridge Consultants
Cambridge Consultants, which is a DeepTech powerhouse subsidiary of French company Capgemini SE, is home to an unrivalled combination of multidisciplinary experts in biology, chemistry, gen AI, digital twins, electronics, software, sustainability and more. The team delivers over 500 scientific, engineering and design projects each year and help some of the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious startups realise their tech-based aspirations.
The DeepTech innovator has already spun out more than 20 businesses, and a new FutureTech function identifies commercial opportunities ahead of the game – in some cases before there are established markets for the scientific and technological breakthroughs.
Cambridge Intelligence
Cambridge Intelligence has pioneered new ways to visualise complex data since 2011. Its innovative data visualisation toolkits - KeyLines, ReGraph, KronoGraph and its new geospatial visualisation SDK, MapWeave – make it easy to build powerful, customised user experiences for complex data. Leading organisations in cybersecurity, intelligence and fraud detection around the world build big ideas on the foundation of the company’s data visualisation expertise.
Cambridge Medixine
Cambridge Medixine is positioned to redefine RNA medicine and merits recognition. Founded in late 2023 by Dr. Ahmet C. Berkyürek and Dr. Andreas W. Claas, the RNA biotech startup is developing RNARISE, a proprietary, non-viral, self-amplifying RNA platform. RNARISE addresses major challenges in current mRNA therapeutics, including toxicity, poor tissue targeting, and manufacturing complexity – it’s smaller, programmable and scalable, offering broad applications in vaccines, therapeutics, and gene therapies. Backed by early funding, proof-of-concept data and selection for the prestigious KQ Labs Accelerator, the company combines scientific innovation with rapid execution.
Cambrionix
Cambrionix’ innovation lies in the unique way it has utilised Thunderbolt technology. Traditionally used for high-speed data transfer, Cambrionix has adapted Thunderbolt technology to eliminate endpoint limitations of USB hubs and docks, which cause significant connectivity and performance issues. No other company has achieved this.
Its Thunderbolt-powered USB hubs enable high-speed syncing, charging and control of large device fleets, turning hours-long processes into minutes, unlocking guaranteed data transfer speeds that traditional USB hubs can’t match and 7x faster than market alternatives. This innovation addresses long-standing challenges in Circular Tech and SQA, including slow restore times, system failures under load, and energy inefficiency.
Cellular Origins
Cellular Origins is solving a critical challenge – making advanced cell therapies accessible by industrialising cell therapy manufacturing. Its digitally integrated, robotically automated Constellation ecosystem has attracted growing partnerships, including a landmark collaboration announcement with Johnson & Johnson, installation of its first system at Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, and securing a £1 million Innovate UK grant alongside CGT Catapult and Resolution Therapeutics.
Expanding its team from 20 to over 70 experts within just 12 months, and attracting global recognition, Cellular Origins has demonstrated rapid progress and growth, confirming Constellation as a scalable, financially robust solution designed explicitly for global patient impact.
Constructive Bio
Constructive Bio is redefining what is possible in synthetic biology. At an unparalleled scale, it rewrites entire genomes to create organisms producing complex synthetic molecules cleanly and efficiently, bypassing the toxic solvents and wasteful multi-step syntheses of traditional methods. This unlocks sustainable production of high-demand therapeutics like GLP-1 analogues and the next generation of cancer treatments (ADCs) while enabling entirely new classes of drugs and materials.
Backed by $75m and led by CEO Ola Wlodek, Constructive Bio isn’t just improving how we make things, but redefining it, offering a scalable blueprint for sustainable biotech across health, agriculture, and materials.
Coracle
James Tweed is the founder and CEO of Cambridge-based digital learning company Coracle, which provides inmates at 93 prisons in England and Wales with access to education in their cells through laptops. Coracle holds a King’s Award for Enterprise Award for Promoting Opportunity and in 2025 became a certified B Corporation. Its tech platform allows secure access to courses delivered by partners such as the Open University, Aim eLearning and Hatch Digital. Coracle is one of the few companies authorised by the Ministry of Justice and HM Prisons and Probation Service to provide educational laptops to prisoners.
CuspAI
CuspAI is a frontier AI company developing breakthrough materials to drive human progress and address global challenges like climate change. Its platform blends state-of-the-art generative models with chemistry simulators and a reinforcement learning agent.
CuspAI raised a $30 million seed round and has established key industry and research partnerships – including with Meta to make carbon capture affordable and scalable. It has active programmes in other high-impact areas including advanced semiconductors and energy systems. CuspAI has secured top AI advisers, including Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton and Meta’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, reinforcing its growing influence in AI-driven materials innovation.
The traditional materials discovery process takes decades, costs billions, and fails over 90 per cent of the time. CuspAI’s materials ‘search engine’ explores, predicts, and optimises material properties across billions of potential combinations at unprecedented speed. Its foundational technology could have a ripple effect across multiple applications and industries where incremental improvements can unlock billions in value.
Domainex
A King’s Awards winner and our 2023 Life Science Scale-Up champion, Domainex is a leading integrated drug discovery company and research partner with a particular focus on small molecule research. This year, the company is tilting at the Collaboration of the Year Award. Domainex supported Sitryx’s MTHFD2 programme resulting in SIT047, a novel, oral inhibitor, progressing to clinical development for psoriatic arthritis.
Over the course of the programme, Domainex established a close partnership with the Sitryx team and this collaborative approach was essential to the success of the project. In 2024, the company opened a new Biology Centre of Excellence HQ at Unity Park in Cambridge to house more than 100 scientists. Its existing state-of-the-art Chemistry Centre of Excellence is at Chesterford Research Park.
Epitopea
Transatlantic cancer company Epitopea has made exceptional progress during 2024/5. In October 2024, it secured $31m in financing to advance its innovative immunotherapeutic platform. In February 2025, Epitopea entered a significant license and research collaboration with MSD, further validating its innovative approach.
In May, Epitopea’s founding laboratories at Université de Montréal, published a landmark study in Nature Cancer confirming that in highly mutated cancers most tumour antigens are derived from wild-type, unmutated junk DNA. This exemplifies the power of the company’s CryptoMap™ platform to identify actionable, shared, tumour antigens for therapeutic development across the tumour landscape.
Ethicronics
Ethicronics is redefining hardware assurance with a software-first approach to counter compromised and counterfeit electronics. Under the DASA Defence Technology Exploitation Programme with Thales, Ethicronics has advanced HEAVENS, its flagship scalable assurance solution. Its collaborative £2.5M project with world-leading experts in computer architecture, memory, and security at the University of Oxford and Panmnesia enhances its innovation impact.
ExpressionEdits
ExpressionEdits is redefining how protein expression constructs are designed, using its AI-driven Genetic Syntax Engine and proprietary intronisation technology. Co-founded by Dr. Kärt Tomberg, the ExpressionEdits team is the first to systematically engineer multi-intron constructs to unlock higher, more reliable transgene expression. This approach enables the production of proteins previously considered inaccessible.
With $13m in seed funding and partnerships including Boehringer Ingelheim, the company brings together deep expertise in computational biology and therapeutic development. ExpressionEdits a strong candidate in multiple Awards categories including Female Founder in AI for which Dr Tomberg is shortlisted.
Eyesea Green
Eyesea Green’s revolutionary Eyesense platform processes more than one billion environmental sensor readings per month to cut energy use in heritage and hard-to-retrofit buildings by 30 per cent while predicting damp, mould and retrofit ROI. The platform is now saving 25-35 per cent energy across multiple Cambridge Colleges. Founded by Dr Anna-Maria Kypraiou, Eyesea Green has, in the past 12 months, secured paid installations with 10 UK councils, seven housing associations, won Innovate UK’s Big Retrofit Challenge and was Highly Commended at the 2025 UK Green Business Awards.
FlexEnable Technology
FlexEnable is redefining the capabilities of electronic displays and optics. Its flexible organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) technology and FlexiOM™ materials bring a paradigm shift that offers compelling business advantages across multiple sectors.
The successful mass production and shipment of the Ledger Stax crypto wallet, featuring organic transistor e-paper display wrapped around a 180-degree bend, proves the viability and scalability of its disruptive technology. It is now sought after for colour and large area ePaper displays by major industry players. Beyond displays, FlexEnable’s technology is game-changing for applications like AR glasses for which it enables pixelated dimming for improved visual experience and user comfort, and embedded ePrivacy screens for notebooks for which it offers switchable privacy functionality.
GenieAI
Genie AI is transforming the legal landscape by removing barriers to access and making legal services available to more people than ever before. As part of a movement to disrupt the outdated, inequitable model of charging for time, Genie AI is pioneering a fairer, more inclusive future for the legal sector. This marks the first step in their bold mission to help restructure society for good - placing harmony, peace, and wellness for all above GDP. Founder and CEO Rafie is a true AI expert and embodiment of tech for good. Genie’s inclusion in The Sunday Times’ “Best Places to Work” reflects its purpose-led culture.
Green Doors
Joseph Holman is the CEO and founder of King’s Award-winning upcycling company Green Doors, which started with a door he found in a skip. The business now produces revenues of close to £2m and has 12 employees. Last year the business saved over 3000 items destined for landfill, has over 1600 doors for sale and operates two warehouses with a combined size of 25,000 sq ft. Profiled recently for The Times and BBC News, Holman is on a mission to provide every door with a second life and to stop UPVC going to landfill.
HutanBio
HutanBio is on a mission to disrupt the biofuel industry, scaling up its HBx program to make carbon-negative biofuels to meet the challenge of transitioning to net zero in the marine and heavy transport sectors.
The heavy transport sector uses more than 1 billion tonnes of oil per year in highly utilised, long-lived assets making them difficult to decarbonise. Growing pressure to cut emissions is accelerating the demand for cost-effective, sustainable, low-carbon fuels to meet tightening mandates. HBx biofuel is a zero-carbon, sustainable fuel made from CO2, sunlight, and a 2-billion-year-old marine microalga.
Isomerase
Over the last 12 months, Isomerase has expanded its offerings as a synthetic biology innovation partner by bringing in new members and developing proprietary technology. This growth has been complemented by the release of Evoselect, the company’s machine learning platform for protein engineering. Evoselect is now being utilised by its partners, fostering an innovation ecosystem. The technology allows for a significant reduction in the number of experiments required, enabling rapid biocatalytic solutions across various industries, from pharma to AgriTech.
Kigen
Kigen stands out by championing device makers with a vision to simplify secure-by-design adoption of eSIM and iSIM across IoT, energy, and manufacturing. Its latest GSMA-compliant eSIM OS launch saw 70+ customer wins in one quarter. Backed by new funding from Arm, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and SBI Group, Kigen is scaling innovation for smart manufacturing. From enabling LCRA’s mission-critical network across Texas to accelerating production for a global wearable leader, Kigen’s DeepTech delivers real-world impact. A true tech scale-up, Kigen lives by its value to “Think Big, Act Fast” and builds the digital trust layer that physical AI will rely on.
LinkGevity
AI-driven drug discovery company LinkGevity, focused on revolutionising the treatment of ageing and age-related diseases, is developing a first-in-class anti-necrotic therapeutic which is set to initiate clinical trials this year for kidney disease and accelerated ageing. The company, founded by Dr. Carina Kern and Serena Kern-Libera, identifies and targets key pathological pathways, which are the molecular source of destructive cascades underlying multiple age-related conditions and biological decline.
The company’s flagship therapeutic is a first-in-class Anti-Necrotic™ which targets one such pathological pathway: necrosis. It has earned a Horizon Europe grant from the European Union alongside UK government funding. LinkGevity was also chosen as one of only 12 companies globally for the NASA/Microsoft Space-Health Program, due to the Anti-Necrotic’s™ potential in preventing accelerated ageing and tissue degeneration in astronauts.
Luminance
Developed by AI experts from Cambridge University, Luminance’s proprietary, Legal-Grade™ AI augments every touchpoint a business has with its contracts. A key differentiator is Luminance’s rate and scale of innovation, consistently releasing world-first AI developments and groundbreaking features. The results reflect Luminance’s success, with 6x Corporate ARR growth and 5x Corporate customer growth in the past two years, with blue-chip organisations such as AMD, BBC Studios and DHL adopting Luminance’s technology in the past year. Luminance also secured over $115 million in funding in under a year, demonstrating incredible confidence in its vision, leading position and market demand.
Mestag Therapeutics
Mestag is developing paradigm-changing treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases based on fibroblast-immune biology. Its M300 program is entering Phase 1 clinical studies in H1 2026 and has a unique mechanism – inducing TLS which leads to robust anti-tumour responses in preclinical models.
Its first-in-class stromal agonist antibody, M402, is designed to dampen down myeloid-driven biology in autoimmune and inflammatory disease. In 2024, Mestag entered into a target discovery collaboration with Merck/MSD in inflammatory diseases (potential total value of $1.9bn), licensed a novel inflammatory disease target to Johnson & Johnson, and was awarded a £1.5m “Transforming Cancer Therapeutics” grant from Innovate UK.
Mursla Bio
Mursla Bio is a leader in Extracellular Vesicle (EV) science, transforming cancer outcomes through precision diagnostics. Mursla’s AI Precision Medicine Platform enables organ-specific multi-omics analysis from blood, powering biomarker discovery, assay development, and diagnostic productisation across diseases.
The platform powers EvoLiver™, a blood test for early detection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma, the fastest growing cause of cancer related deaths globally. In the past 12 months, Mursla has: received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for EvoLiver™; launched an AI Precision Medicine Platform; been recognised by AASLD for clinical results surpassing current surveillance methods; and joined a leading European consortium – EVEREST – to advance EV-based clinical applications.
Neobe Therapeutics
Founded in 2021 by oncology and bacterial engineering experts Pedro Correa de Sampaio (CEO) and Annelise Soulier (CSO), Neobe has raised over £3m in funding led by key pre-seed funds Cancer Research Horizons and 2048 Ventures, to build an innovative synthetic biology platform to remodel the physical properties of solid tumours, increasing immune cell and drug infiltration and enabling curative responses to existing drugs.
Lead indications are triple negative breast and pancreas cancers. Enabling immunotherapy responses in these patients will be clinically transformative, generating up to $18bn in revenue, the company says. Clinical proof of concept by 2027 will open the way to further drug classes.
NRG Therapeutics
After more than five years of science innovation and drug discovery, in 2024 NRG Therapeutics nominated its first development candidate, NRG5051, with potential to treat Parkinson’s and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) (also known as Motor Neuron Disease, MND) and other neurodegenerative diseases. Mitochondria, the batteries of cells, are crucial for energy production, especially in brain cells.
The candidate drug aims to prevent mitochondrial dysfunction by blocking a novel protein target, inhibition of which in animals, has been shown to prevent neuronal cell death and reduce neuroinflammation. On the back of this advance, it was awarded a $5m grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance NRG5051 into the clinic, with first-in-human clinical studies anticipated by end of 2025.
Nuclera
A previous Business Weekly Awards category winner, Nuclera is a world-class disruptor in the life science sector, revolutionising drug discovery with its eProtein Discovery™ System, enabling rapid, scalable access to high-quality proteins through accelerated protein expression and purification. In the last 12 months the company has closed a $75m series C financing round, strengthened its leadership team, completed the first CRO System installation at Domainex and expanded its global footprint – establishing distribution networks in APAC and the Middle East.
Nu Quantum
University of Cambridge spin-out Nu Quantum is pioneering a critical missing link in the future of quantum computing: scalable networking. It is developing the Entanglement Fabric, a novel networking architecture that links quantum processors to enable datacentre-scale quantum computing and accelerate fault tolerance.
At the heart of this is the world’s first Quantum Networking Unit, designed for dynamic entanglement across quantum data centres. The company’s innovation marks a major milestone in advancing distributed quantum systems and unlocking real-world utility. By addressing a fundamental gap in the quantum stack, Nu Quantum is driving the commercialisation of the entire quantum industry.
Nyobolt
Nyobolt is disrupting the battery industry by enabling a seamless transition to clean power with batteries that pack 10x more power, charge faster and eradicate downtime. The Cambridge-based technology leader is serving critical industries such as heavy duty automotive, AI robotic industrial automation and AI data centres which demand unprecedented power density through its proprietary battery technology.
Covering the entire value chain from material science to full system solution, together with proven public demonstrations of its sub-five minute charging EV and contracts totalling over $140 m already secured, Nyobolt is leading the charge to powering an AI driven future.
Optibrium
Optibrium’s BioPharmics™ platform provides tools to overcome a key challenge in drug discovery: targeting disease-causing proteins considered “undruggable” by traditional small molecules. Its powerful 3D molecular modelling technology is unparalleled in its ability to handle complex macrocyclic compounds, which outperform small molecules especially in targeting surface-level sites often involved in protein-protein interactions.
The technology is enabling pharmaceutical companies to develop therapeutics for previously impossible targets while reducing both time and costs in drug development. Optibrium recently clinched a multi-million-pound financing package from UK bank Shawbrook to accelerate business growth.
Outsee
OutSee is disrupting the application of genomics to drug discovery with its predictive AI. Whilst the majority of advances in genomics analyses -since the human genome was sequenced in 2000- focus on methods that one way or another involve correlation, OutSee has a highly innovative predictive approach. In an investment climate facing strong headwinds, OutSee closed a £1.8M seed round on top of £0.5M in precision medicine grants and angels have winged in to swell that extended round. With moonshot companies out of favour and in a time of conservatism and risk aversion, OutSee has progressed on the promise of a broadly disruptive and potentially game-changing technology.
PhoreMost
PhoreMost is a next-generation targeted protein degradation company developing a pipeline of best-in-class degrader therapeutics in oncology and inflammation. Using its SITESEEKER and GlueSEEKER platforms, PhoreMost is uncovering novel functional E3 ligases for small molecule drug development and systematically discovering new molecular glue degraders, an emerging class of drugs that overcome the limitations of traditional bivalent degraders. PhoreMost is making transformative strides in the field, having in the last year extended its Series B financing ($50m) to progress its degrader assets through preclinical development.
Quantinuum
Quantum computing pioneer Quantinuum has grown into a unicorn many times over following a $300m raise at the start of 2024 which valued the business at $5 billion pre-money. By applying the laws of quantum physics to computing, the company intends to achieve unprecedented breakthroughs in drug discovery, healthcare, materials science, cybersecurity, energy transformation and climate change.
In May 2025 Quantinuum finalised a joint venture in Qatar with Al Rabban Capital valued at up to $1 billion to provide a game-changing boost to the development of Quantum Computing. It is arguably the largest single investment in the sector, a Quantinuum source reveals.
Raspberry Pi
Championed as a home-grown success story, Raspberry Pi listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange in June 2024. The deal was at the top of its expected price range, raising £166m in a successful IPO and giving the company a market cap on admission of £541.6m, a total that has since jumped up to over £800m since the start of trading. Since, demand for the stock has been significant and the IPO is widely recognised as highly successful, the deal deemed transformational not only for the company but also for the London Stock Exchange.
Since Raspberry Pi began trading in 2012, it has sold over 60 million computers and compute modules, of which 7.4 million were sold in 2023. Raspberry Pi is a leader in low-cost, high-performance single board computers and compute modules for industrial IoT customers and embedded uses (I&E), as well as for educators and enthusiasts, in markets worldwide.
Its parent company, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, was founded as a UK-based charity in 2008 with the goal of promoting interest among young people in computer science. Today, the Foundation is a leader in the development of curriculum, resources, and teacher professional development for computing in schools.
Rnwl
Insurance innovator Rnwl was acquired by the well-known price comparison website Go.Compare earlier this year. The terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed but was worth multimillions. The idea for Rnwl came to founder Goncalo de Vasconcelos during a holiday in 2019. After talking to various parties in the industry, he decided it was an idea worth pursuing and he hired the team in January 2020.
The sale of Rnwl to Go.Compare took place less than five years later, still with the original team behind building Rnwl from scratch. The sale was a competitive process between three major companies, interested in the team’s speed of execution, the quality of the technology and the value of the IP. This allowed the company to secure an outstanding valuation for such a nascent business.
RxCelerate
RxCelerate’s mission is to improve people’s lives through scientific excellence and innovation in drug discovery and development. It specialises in solving complex challenges from first principles, avoiding one-size-fits-all models, and proactively evolving its offering to meet ever-changing needs.
RxCelerate leverages cutting-edge proprietary technologies, in-house expertise and state-of-the-art facilities to design and deliver integrated programmes that turn our clients’ promising discoveries into novel therapeutics. Since 2013, the company has significantly contributed to 25+ clinical candidates for clients globally, 14 of which have already progressed to the clinic.
Shift Bioscience
Shift Bioscience’s mission is to combat age-driven diseases – using AI-powered, virtual cells to uncover the previously hidden biology of cellular rejuvenation and exert substantial control over our body’s ageing process. In October 2024, the company closed $16m Seed funding, kickstarting extensive platform development and international expansion, including appointing Professor Bo Wang, Dr Jill Reckless, Sir Tony Kouzarides and Lord David Prior.
In June, Shift made a landmark announcement with the discovery of a novel single-gene target capable of reversing cellular aging across multiple cell types, without inducing dangerous pluripotency – cementing the company’s place at the forefront of cell rejuvenation therapeutics.
Tessellate Bio
Tessellate Bio has entered into a strategic collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, to jointly develop first-in-class treatments targeting tumours dependent on a mechanism known as Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (prevalent in ~10-15 per cent of cancers and associated with poor prognosis).
Boehringer Ingelheim has a proven commitment to precision oncology and capabilities to bring treatments to patients making it the ideal partner to advance novel drug candidates discovered by Tessellate Bio. The collaboration aligns with Tessellate Bio’s mission of bringing targeted synthetic lethal treatments to patients as quickly as possible, with the aim of turning more cancer patients into cancer survivors.
TRIMTECH Therapeutics
TRIMTECH announced in March an impressive £25 million seed funding round, led by Cambridge Innovation Capital and SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund. The funds will support further development of the company’s growing pipeline of potent, CNS-penetrant therapeutics based on its aggregate-selective degrader molecules known as TRIMTACs.
The pipeline is focused around the development of treatments for severe neurodegenerative and inflammatory disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. TRIMTECH’s approach is based on more than 15 years of pioneering work by two of its founders, elucidating the function and mechanism of action of the novel E3-ligase, TRIM21.
Vasodynamics
Founded by CEO Dr Fiona Ningfeng-Li, an accomplished radiation Oncologist and Scientist, young clinical stage pharmaceutical company Vasodynamics Ltd is developing a game-changing treatment platform.
VDL aims to disrupt expectations and improve cancer treatment journeys by preventing severe side effects from cancer therapies. Its portfolio of preventative topical drugs for global markets includes: - NG11-2 for Severe Radiation-Induced Oral Mucositis (Mouth ulceration) NG12 for Radiodermatitis (Skin burn) NG13 for Chemotherapy-Induced Alopecia (Hairloss) With a bedrock of good assets, rigorous scientific validation, and underserved patient populations, the VDL team are confident in the future global success of its products, and the benefits to patients, payers, and investors.
Wave Photonics
In January 2025, Wave Photonics released the SiNQ (Silicon Nitride for Quantum) PDK - a 1056-element optical component library, supporting 33 wavelengths from 493nm to 1550nm making it the most expansive PDK in the world.
The PDK is based on Wave Photonics’ core computational design technology, which enables the production of designs which account for fabrication imperfections, Wafer-scale measured data from the Compound Semiconductor Applications Catapult shows a 2x improvement in component performance uniformity relative to conventional inverse-designed components. However, perhaps the most important point about this PDK is the time it took to develop - using the company’s core parallelised design technology, the entire component library was developed in just three weeks. Wave Photonics will now proceed to roll out its design for a range of other foundries/manufacturers.
Wellcome Sanger Institute
From championing open data sharing since the Human Genome Project, to advancing genomic surveillance and single-cell technologies, the Wellcome Sanger Institute remains at the cutting edge of genomics. The Institute takes on challenges of unprecedented scale that cannot be easily done elsewhere. Sanger’s discovery research empowers scientists to decode rare diseases, validate drug targets, track pathogens and understand all life on Earth.
The Sanger Institute maximises the reach of its reference genomes, datasets and translation efforts including five spin-out companies. It catalyses a vibrant, collaborative field that underpins precision medicine, and was named Nature’s top innovator of the field in 2022.
