Portal Biotech has successfully secured $35 million in a Series A funding round, a significant investment that the company will use to advance what it calls the world’s first platform for full-length, single-molecule protein sequencing. According to a press release issued on Monday, this financing represents one of the most substantial investments in a European life sciences tools company.
The funding round was co-led by the NATO Innovation Fund and Earlybird Venture Capital. The company also saw considerable participation from existing investors and attracted new capital from We Venture Capital, the British Business Bank, and WS Investment Company.
Portal Biotech’s technology aims to revolutionize proteomics by enabling the analysis of intact proteins at the single-molecule level. A company announcement mentioned that this approach, which combines nanopore-based biosensing with artificial intelligence, provides a highly detailed view of protein structures and modifications that traditional methods cannot achieve. This breakthrough is poised to have a transformative impact on fields such as drug discovery, precision medicine, and biosecurity, the statement continued.
Ana Bernardo-Gancedo, a Senior Investment Associate at the NATO Innovation Fund, stated that the fund invested in Portal Biotech because its platform could unlock the next frontier of biological data, which is crucial for healthcare resilience and biosecurity.
The company, led by veterans in nanopore genomics, has developed a desktop instrument that it claims will make this advanced protein characterization accessible to any laboratory. This would shift complex proteomic analysis from a specialized, costly procedure to an efficient and cost-effective workflow.
Andy Heron, CEO and co-founder of Portal Biotech, noted that these powerful advances are essential for speeding up drug discovery and improving diagnostic precision.
The newly acquired funds are earmarked for accelerating the company’s commercial rollout. Portal Biotech plans to expand its research and development capabilities, grow its engineering and data science teams, and deepen its collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech firms, according to the release. The company believes this will accelerate breakthroughs by providing a clearer understanding of protein biology.
