This London Startup Just Raised $2.8M to Let AI Design Cancer Drug Combos

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-18

Big Picture Bio, a London-based biotech startup, just stepped out of stealth with a combined funding round of €2.55 million (about $2.8 million). They're using AI to design combination therapies for cancer and other complex diseases. And honestly, it's the kind of story that makes you stop and think about how we fight cancer. ### The Funding Breakdown The funding is split into two parts: - A €1.75 million pre-Seed round (roughly $1.9 million) co-led by Kadmos Capital and Exceptional Ventures. Gloucester Ventures and angel investor John White also chipped in. - €815k (around $900k) in non-dilutive support from Innovate UK's Investor Partnerships Programme. So yeah, they've got some serious backing. But what's the big idea? ### A "World Model" for Cancer 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? Figure out which drug combinations — and in what sequence — are most likely to keep cancer from developing resistance. Here's the problem they're tackling: cancer isn't one disease. It's a moving target. And with over 900 billion possible drug combinations, no lab on Earth can test them all. As Dr. Papenfuss puts it: "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." That's where their AI comes in. A full pairwise screen of just 100 drugs at 100 doses would need roughly 50 million lab experiments. Their models can search computationally in seconds. That's a game-changer. ### Proven Predictions And they're not just talking theory. Their predictive approach has already been tested against real clinical data. They correctly forecasted the failure of Regeneron's fianlimab trial. And before the 2026 ASCO oncology conference, they posted 14 predictions — 12 of which proved accurate. That's a pretty solid track record. ### The Team Behind It Papenfuss and Hammond aren't newcomers. They spent years at Deep Science Ventures. Papenfuss built and led DSV's therapeutics team, founding 12 companies. Hammond co-founded DSV and helped grow its portfolio from €174k to over €1.16 billion. They've worked together for seven years, tackling complex diseases. So they know what they're doing. Plus, their advisory team includes heavy hitters from AstraZeneca, Exscientia, and PhoreMost. That's a lot of brainpower. ### What's Next? With this funding, Big Picture Bio will take its AI-designed cancer combinations from computer models into the wet lab. They'll start with cancer and immune-mediated diseases, but their ultimate goal is to move beyond trial-and-error combination testing altogether. It's a bold vision. And if it works, it could change how we develop cancer treatments. Instead of guessing, we could be designing combinations that are most likely to work in patients — right from the start. We'll be watching this one closely.