Oxford BioTech startup Scripta Therapeutics emerges from stealth today by announcing a €10.3 million ($12 million) Seed round to upend conventional approaches to drug discovery.
The round is led jointly by Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Apollo Health Ventures, with further investment from AlbionVC, YZR Capital, and Parkwalk Advisors, and support from Oxford University Innovation.
Peter Hamley, founder and CEO of Scripta, said, “We’re flipping the script on conventional target-based drug discovery to find therapies that genuinely move the needle for patients. By focusing on understanding and manipulating the master controllers of biology, we’re searching for drugs with the potential not just to delay disease progression but to stop it in its tracks.”
This newly announced Seed round for Scripta Therapeutics fits within a wider trend of European BioTech investment in 2025, marked by continued backing for AI-enabled and biology-led drug discovery.
In the UK, TRIMTECH Therapeutics secured €28.6 million to advance small-molecule degrader therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, underlining sustained investor appetite for CNS-focused innovation. Elsewhere, Graph Therapeutics in Austria and Aerska in Ireland highlight Europe’s push toward AI-driven discovery and brain-targeted RNA therapeutics.
A further example, BIMINI Biotech from the Netherlands, reflects adjacent oncology activity drawing on similar computational approaches.
Taken together, these 2025 rounds total roughly €51 million, illustrating steady investor commitment to platform-based and neuro-centric therapeutics – with Scripta’s raise reinforcing the UK’s role as a focal point for next-generation drug discovery.
BioTech business builder Ray Barlow, CEO of SynOx Therapeutics, has also been brought on to strengthen Scripta’s board as a Non-Executive Director: “Scripta brings fresh thinking and a novel biology-led, data-rich approach to a traditionally challenging area of drug discovery. I am looking forward to working with this outstanding team to deliver effective new medicines that are long overdue for so many patients.”
By focusing on altering the activity of transcription factors – the master controllers of biology – Scripta is searching for drugs with the potential not just to delay disease progression, but to halt or even reverse it. Combining pharma, BioTech, and disease biology expertise with the computational power to push the boundaries of biology, Scripta aims to deliver disease-modifying therapeutics that transform outcomes for patients.
Scripta’s approach is based on the concept that transcription factors, the master controllers of gene expression, are core drivers of disease and act as detailed and dynamic maps of the mechanisms that underpin it.
Through a data-rich, lab-in-the-loop combination of experimental biology with cutting-edge AI and informatics, Scripta aims to efficiently identify therapeutics that modulate these maps to restore healthy cell states.
Claire Brown, Partner at OSE and board member of Scripta, said, “We’re proud to be backing Scripta – a brilliant team that exemplifies the next generation of technology-enabled drug discovery and capitalises on the strength of the University of Oxford and the wider Oxford ecosystem.”
While the platform can be applied to any disease, the team is focusing first on Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions in collaboration with scientific co-founder Noel Buckley, Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Oxford.
Marianne Mertens, Partner at Apollo Health Ventures, added, “Manipulating transcription factors in disease has long been seen as an intractable challenge, yet it holds tremendous promise for treating neurodegeneration and other life-limiting conditions.
“Scripta’s innovative approach could deliver transformational therapies and exemplifies one of Apollo’s key investment strategies: reprogramming diseased cells into healthy ones to tackle the root causes of age-related diseases and enable disease-modifying treatments.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/11/the-uks-scripta-therapeutics-raises-over-e10-million-to-flip-the-script-on-drug-discovery/
