£36m · Series C · Healthtech · Cambridge, UK
Cambridge-based Microbiotica, a clinical-stage developer of oral microbiome medicines, has raised the £36m first close of a Series C financing. British Business Bank led the round, with Tencent, IP Group, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Flerie Invest and Seventure Partners participating. The capital will advance MB310 into Phase 2 development for ulcerative colitis.
The round buys a controlled efficacy test
MB310 is a once-daily capsule containing eight defined strains of live gut bacteria. Microbiotica is developing it to promote repair of the intestinal barrier and help patients achieve durable remission. The company says its randomized Phase 1b COMPOSER-1 study met its primary and secondary endpoints and showed statistically significant improvements in clinical remission versus placebo, alongside histological and barrier-integrity signals.
Those results justify a larger trial; they do not establish that MB310 works in a broader patient population. The planned randomized, double-blind Phase 2 study is the financing’s central value-creation milestone because it must test whether the early signal is reproducible and clinically meaningful. For investors, that concentrates the next proof point in a defined programme rather than a general promise about the microbiome.
A precision platform still has to manufacture a medicine
Microbiotica’s platform uses genomic profiling and clinical-response data to identify bacterial signatures associated with favourable outcomes, then selects defined strains for therapeutic development. That is more controlled than treating the microbiome as an undifferentiated ecosystem, but it also creates an execution burden: the company must manufacture a consistent eight-strain product, maintain viability and dosing quality, and connect those controls to outcomes across multiple trial sites.
The company was spun out of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2016 and also has an immuno-oncology programme, MB097, in Phase 1b development for advanced melanoma. Partnerships with MSD, Cancer Research UK, Genentech, the University of Adelaide and Cambridge University Hospitals give the platform several routes to clinical evidence. Yet the Series C is principally a test of MB310. If Phase 2 confirms remission and barrier-repair signals, Microbiotica will have stronger evidence that its discovery platform can produce a defined medicine rather than only an association between gut bacteria and disease.
Sources checked:
Microbiotica company announcement · Microbiotica pipeline · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
