Helsinki-based Avenue Biosciences, a protein engineering technology company, today announced a Seed extension of €4.8 million ($5.7 million) to scale a high-throughput protein engineering tech that accelerates the discovery of protein-based therapies and tools for the BioTech industry.
The round was co-led by Balnord, and Tesi, with support from existing investors Voima Ventures, Inventure, University of Helsinki, and Dimerent. This financing brings their total funding raised to date since 2024 to €7.4 million ($8.7 million), following their €2.3 million raise.
“The secretory pathway is one of the remaining black boxes in therapeutic protein production. Despite its importance, the current industry standard relies heavily on a decades-old playbook, testing only a small set of safe signal peptides rather than exploring thousands of sequence variants. Our technology makes the increasingly complex proteins, such as AI-designed proteins or multispecifics, more manufacturable, improving access to lifesaving therapies,” comments Tero-Pekka Alastalo, CEO and co-founder of Avenue Biosciences.
Avenue Biosciences’ Seed extension can be situated alongside a steady flow of funding into protein engineering, programmable biology and adjacent BioTech platforms.
In Portugal, PFx Biotech raised €2.5 million to develop allergy-free human milk proteins using precision fermentation. The Netherlands-based Laigo Bio secured €11.5 million to advance its SureTAC targeted protein-degradation platform, while in the UK, TRIMTECH Therapeutics raised €28.6 million to develop protein-degradation therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. Also in London, Latent Labs closed €47.9 million to scale its AI-powered programmable biology platform.
Taken together, these rounds represent approximately €90 million in disclosed funding moving through European BioTech platform companies during this period.
Against this backdrop, Avenue Biosciences’ Seed extension reflects continued investor interest in foundational technologies that improve protein discovery and manufacturability, particularly where wet-lab biology is combined with machine learning to address bottlenecks in biologics development.
“Novel protein-based biologics under development for example in cancer, rare diseases or immunology, are becoming increasingly targeted and effective, performing several functions with one therapeutic component: Bring immune cells to the right place, activate them, and recognise disease cells more specifically.
“However, this adds complexity to the protein structure, adding manufacturing cost, or in the worst case, preventing the development completely,” comments COO, co-founder and Helsinki laboratory site lead Katja Rosti.
Founded in 2023, Avenue Biosciences is a BioTech company dedicated to accelerating the discovery and development of protein biologics, so that “no life-saving therapy goes unrealised because of production barriers“.
Avenue Biosciences has developed a protein engineering platform that combines organic biology and machine learning to boost protein production.
The technology uses a library of thousands of naturally occurring and engineered signal peptides to measure the efficiency of protein biogenesis in the secretory pathway – the machinery responsible for folding, modifying, and secreting therapeutic proteins.
“Avenue’s technology taps into some of the largest opportunities in BioTech right now: it significantly lowers the costs of biologics and transforms therapeutic protein manufacturing with the use of AI. Their combination of wet lab and machine learning enables the development of high-quality prediction tools for therapeutic developers, targeting the biggest bottlenecks in the industry.
“The team has shown incredible execution, with really strong industry names as their clients,” comments Gabriele Poteliunaite, Investor at Balnord.
The company says that signal peptides are intrinsic components of proteins and represent a major untapped opportunity in biotechnology, as they critically affect protein production and quality at the cellular level.
Ultimately, the signal peptides are removed from the mature protein, keeping the target essentially the same as the original, making this approach highly useful also in manufacturing biosimilars, the lower-priced versions of existing therapies.
“Many life-altering therapeutic innovations remain out of reach for most of the global population. We see significant growth opportunities for Avenue’s technology, which is deeply rooted in Finnish scientific discovery, and has the potential to become a gold standard in its field”, adds Investment Director Miia Kaye from Tesi.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/01/finnish-startup-avenue-biosciences-secures-e4-8-million-to-help-drugmakers-manufacture-proteins-more-reliably/
