Portal Biotech secures $35M Series A, backed by SCVC’s largest investment yet
The SCVC portfolio company is leveraging AI, bioengineering and custom electronics to deliver the ‘holy grail’ of full-protein sequencing — reshaping our understanding of protein biology and accelerating drug development and diagnostics.
Portal Biotech, a pioneering biotechnology company, today announced a $35 million Series A raise — one of Europe's largest investments into a life sciences tools company. The round was backed by SCVC, the venture capital arm of Science Creates, marking its largest investment to date. SCVC previously led Portal’s £500k pre-seed round and helped the company set its foundations in 2021 and co-led its £8 million seed round in 2022, bringing in other US and European VCs and investors.
This significant milestone positions Portal Biotech as the leading innovator set to deliver the "holy grail" of full-length single-molecule protein sequencing — a breakthrough never before accomplished — and promises transformative impact on drug discovery, precision medicine, and global biosecurity.
Proteins drive virtually every biological process, so huge gaps in how we currently read proteins and measure the complexity of the proteome derail drug pipelines, cloud diagnostics, and leave biosecurity blind spots. Legacy tools like mass spectrometry shred proteins into fragments and miss critical protein modification patterns that change protein function, which costs industries billions in failed drug trials and misdiagnoses.
Led by veterans of nanopore genomics, and powered by breakthroughs in nanopore biosensing from more that 10 years of academic research in the Maglia lab, Portal Biotech’s nanopore-based platform technology is set to transform proteomics by delivering rapid, full-length, single-molecule protein characterisation at the point of need for a fraction of the price, empowering earlier go/no-go decisions, more reliable diagnostics, and stronger biosecurity responsiveness worldwide.
Portal Biotech’s technology offers unprecedented capabilities in protein identification and characterisation, providing unmatched detail on protein structure and modifications at the single-molecule level—on accessible desktop instruments that bring this state-of-the-art characterisation to any lab," said Andy Heron, co-founder and CEO of Portal Biotech. "These powerful advances are essential for accelerating drug discovery and enhancing diagnostic precision, positioning Portal Biotech as the frontrunner in the race to unlock the full potential of protein sequencing.
Portal Biotech’s platform delivers the world’s first technology for sequencing intact full- length proteins at the single-molecule level to completely characterise all protein mutations and modifications. Coupled with advanced AI methods, this data gives researchers a detailed view into the complexities of the proteome that traditional technologies cannot match, laying the groundwork for new foundational AI models of the dynamic proteome that will reshape our understanding of protein biology and accelerate breakthroughs throughout the life sciences.
Portal Biotech’s benchtop platforms are set to transform proteomics from a specialised, capital-intensive procedure into an agile, cost-efficient workflow that can be performed in any lab. Its accessible and high throughput instruments sidestep the expense and inaccessibility of traditional mass spectrometry, streaming whole-protein data directly to the bench so teams can accelerate early drug-discovery pipelines and make rapid diagnostic decisions.
“Portal Biotech’s technology is opening the door to the human proteome through unlocking single molecule full protein sequencing. This is one of the most important fields of life sciences since the Human Genome over two decades ago; and what the team has achieved since we first backed them in 2021 is extraordinary”, says Harry Destecroix MBE, SCVC Managing Partner and Founder. “I’m proud to have worked with the Portal team since day one, when we first recognised the promise and truly unparalleled potential impact of their core technology. They are the perfect realisation of SCVC’s vision — backing founders with a strong scientific foundation and vision early on, and supporting them through their journey to deliver global change and benefit millions of people. We are excited to continue supporting them in their next chapter alongside top-tier European funds.”
With the genome decoded, Portal Biotech turns the spotlight to proteins to unlock new discoveries in medicine and biology that are still not accessible from genomics alone.
Amid the global push to unlock the human proteome, this substantial funding will fast- track Portal Biotech’s commercialisation roadmap, deepen collaborations with leading pharmaceutical and biotech innovators, and expand its R&D, engineering, and data- science teams.
The oversubscribed round was co-led by the NATO Innovation Fund and Earlybird Venture Capital, with substantial participation from existing investors SCVC, Pillar VC, and 8VC, as well as new investors We Venture Capital and British Business Bank.
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