Tozaro Limited raises £6m/$8.2m to accelerate development & commercialization of Smart Polymer™ affinity ligands in cell & gene therapy

• The round was led by Mercia Ventures and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II (MEIF II).
• Funding into 2027 will support commercialisation of Smart Polymer™ affinity ligands for improving recoveries and purity of lentiviral vectors and AAV for use in cell and gene therapies.
• Further investment to extend Tozaro’s proprietary molecular modelling/machine learning (ML) discovery platform for faster generation of specific and selective polymer-based ligands.

BEDFORD, UK, 16^th February 2026 / Tozaro Limited, a company leveraging molecular modelling and ML to design and develop stable, cost-effective, specific and selective polymer-based ligands, announces a £6m/$8.2m funding round. The investment was led by Mercia Ventures, which was investing from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II and from its own funds, alongside other existing investors.

This additional investment marks a transformational period for Tozaro. The company has demonstrated its ability to rapidly design and discover polymer-based de novo binders to protein epitopes of interest, utilising >500 different monomers. Tozaro’s Smart Polymer™ platform is uniquely suited to generating affinity ligands to support biomanufacturing of advanced therapies, enabling next-generation affinity chromatography products, where stability and cost effectiveness of binding modalities is key.

During 2025, Tozaro collaborated with global chromatography companies to establish proof of concept performance data for Smart Polymer™ ligands for viral vectors. The current funding brings the total raised to date to to £23.7m ($32.2m). It will be used to accelerate further product development and commercialisation of its lentiviral vector and AAV affinity ligands and enable testing in real-world settings.

Jason Slingsby, CEO of Tozaro, said: “During the last 18 months, the Tozaro team has streamlined the rapid design and prototyping of de novo polymer-based binders to selected protein epitopes. We are now the leaders for ML-guided in silico discovery of polymer binders to proteins, a vast new chemical space. This new funding will accelerate the momentum gained in 2025, and support new partnerships and collaborations with leading chromatography companies, who clearly recognise the need for improving recoveries and purity of viral vectors, while simplifying manufacturing processes. I’d like to thank all our existing and new investors for their continued support”.

There are over 70 cell and gene therapy products currently on the market worldwide with over 3,400 in development.* The market is valued at over $10bn today and forecast to grow to over $100bn by 2034.**

Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Asset Management, said: “The growth of this exciting new generation of biological therapeutics is being held back by the extreme cost of production. Tozaro is developing an approach that will significantly reduce this cost, without shouldering the risk of clinical development of the therapeutic itself. It’s a real privilege to witness the significant commercial progress made over the past year, moving from platform development into meaningful engagement with downstream processing partners and potential customers.”  

The £400m Midlands Engine Investment Fund II covers the entire Midlands region and provides equity investment up to £5m and debt finance from £25k to £2m to help a range of small and medium sized businesses to start up, scale up or stay ahead.

The purpose of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II is to drive sustainable economic growth by supporting innovation and creating local opportunity for new and growing businesses across the Midlands. The Midlands Engine Investment Fund II will increase the supply and diversity of early-stage finance for smaller businesses in the Midlands, and help to break down barriers in access to finance.