Oxford BioTech startup Scripta Therapeutics emerges from stealth as we speak by saying a €10.3 million ($12 million) Seed spherical to upend typical approaches to drug discovery.
The spherical is led collectively by Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Apollo Well being Ventures, with additional funding from AlbionVC, YZR Capital, and Parkwalk Advisors, and assist from Oxford College Innovation.
Peter Hamley, founder and CEO of Scripta, stated, “We’re flipping the script on typical target-based drug discovery to search out therapies that genuinely transfer the needle for sufferers. By specializing in understanding and manipulating the grasp controllers of biology, we’re looking for medicine with the potential not simply to delay illness development however to cease it in its tracks.”
This newly introduced Seed spherical for Scripta Therapeutics matches inside a wider development of European BioTech funding in 2025, marked by continued backing for AI-enabled and biology-led drug discovery.
Within the UK, TRIMTECH Therapeutics secured €28.6 million to advance small-molecule degrader therapies for neurodegenerative illnesses, underlining sustained investor urge for food for CNS-focused innovation. Elsewhere, Graph Therapeutics in Austria and Aerska in Eire spotlight Europe’s push towards AI-driven discovery and brain-targeted RNA therapeutics.
An extra instance, BIMINI Biotech from the Netherlands, displays adjoining oncology exercise drawing on comparable computational approaches.
Taken collectively, these 2025 rounds whole roughly €51 million, illustrating regular investor dedication to platform-based and neuro-centric therapeutics – with Scripta’s increase reinforcing the UK’s function as a focus for next-generation drug discovery.
BioTech enterprise builder Ray Barlow, CEO of SynOx Therapeutics, has additionally been introduced on to strengthen Scripta’s board as a Non-Government Director: “Scripta brings recent considering and a novel biology-led, data-rich method to a historically difficult space of drug discovery. I’m wanting ahead to working with this excellent group to ship efficient new medicines which are lengthy overdue for thus many sufferers.”
By specializing in altering the exercise of transcription elements – the grasp controllers of biology – Scripta is looking for medicine with the potential not simply to delay illness development, however to halt and even reverse it. Combining pharma, BioTech, and illness biology experience with the computational energy to push the boundaries of biology, Scripta goals to ship disease-modifying therapeutics that rework outcomes for sufferers.
Scripta’s method relies on the idea that transcription elements, the grasp controllers of gene expression, are core drivers of illness and act as detailed and dynamic maps of the mechanisms that underpin it.
Via a data-rich, lab-in-the-loop mixture of experimental biology with cutting-edge AI and informatics, Scripta goals to effectively establish therapeutics that modulate these maps to revive wholesome cell states.
Claire Brown, Accomplice at OSE and board member of Scripta, stated, “We’re proud to be backing Scripta – a superb group that exemplifies the subsequent era of technology-enabled drug discovery and capitalises on the energy of the College of Oxford and the broader Oxford ecosystem.”
Whereas the platform could be utilized to any illness, the group is focusing first on Alzheimer’s illness and different neurodegenerative circumstances in collaboration with scientific co-founder Noel Buckley, Professor of Neurobiology on the College of Oxford.
Marianne Mertens, Accomplice at Apollo Well being Ventures, added, “Manipulating transcription elements in illness has lengthy been seen as an intractable problem, but it holds large promise for treating neurodegeneration and different life-limiting circumstances.
“Scripta’s revolutionary method may ship transformational therapies and exemplifies one among Apollo’s key funding methods: reprogramming diseased cells into wholesome ones to deal with the foundation causes of age-related illnesses and allow disease-modifying therapies.”
