AI Startup Emerges to Revolutionize Cancer Treatment

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-18

### London Startup Emerges from Stealth with $2.8 Million to Revolutionize Cancer Treatment Big Picture Bio, a London-based biotech startup, just emerged from stealth with a combined funding round of €2.55 million (about $2.8 million). The company is using artificial intelligence to design combination therapies for cancer and other complex diseases. This isn't just another AI drug discovery play—it's a fundamentally different approach to one of medicine's hardest problems. ### The Funding Breakdown The funding comprises a €1.75 million pre-seed round co-led by Kadmos Capital and Exceptional Ventures, plus €815k in non-dilutive support from Innovate UK's Investor Partnerships Programme. Gloucester Ventures and angel investor John White also participated. That's a strong vote of confidence for a company that's still in its early days. ### A Different Kind of AI Founded by CEO Dr. Kerstin Papenfuss and CTO Dr. Mark Hammond, Big Picture Bio has built a generative "world model" that simulates how tumors, immune cells, and surrounding tissue interact. The goal? To identify which drug combinations—and in what sequence—are most likely to hold off cancer resistance. Here's the problem they're tackling: a full pairwise screen of just 100 drugs at 100 doses would require roughly 50 million lab experiments. No physical lab can handle that scale. But their models can search computationally in seconds. > "Cancer is not one disease driven by one target, but we still develop drugs as if it were. Combinations are how we beat it – and with more than 900 billion of them possible, no lab on earth can test its way to the right ones," says Dr. Papenfuss. ### Proven Predictions The company says its predictive approach has already been tested against real clinical data. It correctly forecasted the failure of Regeneron's fianlimab trial and posted 14 predictions ahead of the 2026 ASCO oncology conference—12 of which proved accurate. That's a track record that's hard to ignore. ### A Team with Serious Credentials Before spinning out Big Picture Bio, both founders spent years at Deep Science Ventures. Papenfuss built and led DSV's therapeutics team, founding 12 therapeutics and enabling-technology companies. Hammond co-founded DSV and took it from €174k to a €1.16 billion+ portfolio. They've worked together for seven years, building companies that tackle complex, evolving diseases. The advisory team also draws on senior pharma expertise, including Dr. Laura Rosenberg (Director of Target Validation at AstraZeneca), Dr. Duncan Young (Head of Search & Evaluation, Oncology Business Development & Licensing at AstraZeneca), Dr. Garry Pairaudeau (former CTO of Exscientia and CEO of DaltonTx), and Dr. Christian Dillon (Chief Scientific Officer at PhoreMost). ### What's Next? Big Picture Bio will use the funding to take its AI-designed cancer combination therapies from computer models into the wet lab. The firm will initially focus on cancer and immune-mediated diseases but aims to move beyond trial-and-error combination testing altogether. This is exactly the kind of bold, ambitious thinking that could reshape how we develop cancer treatments. Instead of testing combinations randomly, we can design them intelligently—based on how the disease actually behaves. That's a future worth watching. ### Key Takeaways - Big Picture Bio raised $2.8 million to develop AI-designed cancer drug combinations. - The company's world model simulates tumor-immune interactions to predict effective drug combos. - Their predictions have already been validated against real clinical data. - The team has a strong track record from Deep Science Ventures. - Funding will move their first designed combinations from computer models into lab testing.