Big Picture Bio, the London biotech founded by Dr Kerstin Papenfuss and Dr Mark Hammond, announced last week (Friday) that it had come out of stealth with £2.2 million, or €2.55 million, of funding behind it.
The funds come in two parts. A pre-seed round of £1.5m was co-led by Kadmos Capital and Exceptional Ventures, with Gloucester Ventures and the angel investor John White also taking part. A further £700,000 in non-dilutive support comes from Innovate UK’s Investor Partnerships Programme.
Papenfuss and Hammond, chief executive and chief technology officer respectively, previously worked together for seven years at Deep Science Ventures.
Papenfuss was responsible for DSV’s therapeutic teams and founded 12 therapeutics companies in her time there. She had previous roles at LifeArc and the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult. Hammond co-founded DSV and led work on agentic scientific discovery. He was previously in investment at Imperial College, with Hinge Health, Hark and Monolith all spun out during his time there.
Big Picture Bio’s product is a generative ‘world model’ that simulates the interaction between tumours, immune cells and surrounding tissue. The goal is to establish which combinations of drugs, and in which order, are most likely to halt cancer resistance.
The company says that its predictions have been tested against actual clinical evidence. Its own account correctly forecast the failure of Regeneron’s fianlimab trial, and of 14 predictions posted ahead of the 2026 ASCO oncology conference, 12 proved accurate.
Big Picture Bio’s advisors include AstraZeneca’s Dr Laura Rosenberg and Dr Duncan Young, as well as Dr Garry Pairaudeau, former chief technology officer of Exscientia, and Dr Christian Dillon of PhoreMost.
Dr Papenfuss said: “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.”
