Biotech firm Laverock Therapeutics secures £2.2m in grants
This article covers Laverock Therapeutics, a London biotech startup, being awarded £2.2m in grant funding to accelerate development of its single-cell and AI-powered gene-control platform and to expand therapeutic programmes beyond oncology. The funding is intended to scale platform work in T-cell products and to advance macrophage-based programmes into non-oncology indications, supporting preclinical development and progress toward clinical translation.
Laverock Therapeutics, a London biotech startup, has been awarded more than £2.2m in a grant funding round to accelerate development of its single-cell and AI-powered gene-control platform and to expand therapeutic programmes beyond oncology. The two innovation grants provide non-dilutive capital to scale platform work in T-cell products and push macrophage-based programmes into new disease areas.
Why it matters
Non-dilutive grants remain an important lever for early-stage biotech firms, allowing technology development without giving up equity. For Laverock, the funding supports both platform engineering and disease-targeted work that could broaden the clinical applications of programmable gene control beyond cancer. That combination — single-cell data, AI-driven discovery and cell engineering — reflects a broader industry shift toward data-led optimisation of engineered cell therapies.
Inside the product
Laverock is developing a programmable gene-control system intended to make cell therapies responsive to disease biology. The platform has been demonstrated across multiple cell types: programmed T-cells and macrophages for solid tumours, and hypoimmunogenic pancreatic islet cells aimed at Type 1 diabetes.
According to the company, one of the grants will focus on scaling the platform within a T-cell product context. Projects will use solid tumour patient datasets and foundational datasets on intracellular signalling and antigen expression. Laverock says its single-cell and AI approaches are intended to rapidly identify combinations of product features — for example, sensing circuits, payload expression levels and cell phenotypes — that balance efficacy and safety and can be tailored to tumour type using patient-derived models for rapid prototyping.
The second grant is directed at expanding macrophage-based programmes into non-oncology indications. That work builds on the platform’s ability to programme myeloid cell phenotypes and to precisely control expression of therapeutic payloads. The company plans to run this as a consortium project, drawing in disease specialists and product-development expertise to speed translation toward the clinic.
Who are the investors?
The announcement describes the awards as coming from two industry-leading innovation funds; the funders are not named in the statement. Laverock also notes prior non-dilutive support totalling about £1.8m from UK Research and Innovation through schemes including the Investor Partnership, Biomedical Catalyst and SMART grants.
The new grants are presented as complementary to these earlier awards and intended to de-risk platform and product milestones ahead of clinical development. The company says the macrophage expansion will be a consortium effort, involving external academic and clinical partners, although those partners were not specified in the release.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, David Venables, CEO at Laverock Therapeutics, said:
Success in these two highly competitive grant competitions provides further validation of our approach and will enable us to expand our efforts across platform and product development. As we push towards the clinic for our lead programme this additional funding will help unlock the true breadth of what our technology can achieve. We can’t wait to get started!
Venables frames the grants as validation of the company’s technical approach and as a stepping stone toward clinical milestones for its lead programme.
The bigger picture
Laverock’s news sits at the intersection of two trends shaping European biotech: the increasing use of single-cell data and AI to design cellular medicines, and a move to broaden engineered-cell approaches beyond oncology into inflammatory and metabolic diseases. For UK biotech, continued access to non-dilutive funding remains a key part of the ecosystem, helping startups bridge preclinical work and early clinical testing while preserving equity for later investment rounds.
The awards also underline the role of public and quasi-public innovation funds in de-risking novel modalities. As more UK companies combine data science with cell engineering, securing translational funding — from grants, partnerships or strategic investors — will be central to moving first-in-human studies into the clinic across the region.
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