Nemesis Bioscience raises £700,000

A Cardiff Medicentre-based company has secured £700,000 in seed funding to develop anti-microbial therapies.

Nemesis Bioscience raised the money through Finance Wales, The Rainbow Seed Fund and Dr Mark McCamish.

The company is developing products designed to resurrect anti-microbial therapies made ineffective by increasing microbial resistance.

Proceeds will be used by the company to validate its suite of Bacterial Cybergenetics© technologies.

Nemesis is housed at the Medicentre – a business incubator for biotech and medtech start-ups jointly run by Cardiff University and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.

Phil Barnes, who led the investment for Finance Wales, said: "Nemesis is an exciting portfolio company that has benefited from both Finance Wales' technology seed funding and follow-on investment from our main technology venture funds. Having a high calibre co-investor such as the Rainbow Seed Fund brings great sector experience and additional development capital to the company."

Rainbow's investment director Oliver Sexton added: "Nemesis has world-leading technology. Its platform has been shown to return vulnerability to antibiotics in clinical isolates..."

Nemesis believes the answer to the problem of anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is to switch off resistance mechanisms. Nemesis’ agents do not kill bacteria directly. They resurrect antibiotic susceptibility – eliminating the threat of ‘super bugs’ and ensuring current antibiotics retain efficacy over the long-term.

Nemesis Bioscience, based in Cambridge and Cardiff, was founded in March 2014 by Dr Frank Massam, Professor Conrad Lichtenstein and Dr Gi Mikawa.