Nemesis Bioscience today announced the successful completion of its latest funding round, bringing total seed funds raised to more than £700,000, and the commencement of its preclinical programmes. The round was led by The Rainbow Seed Fund who co-invested alongside Finance Wales and Dr Mark McCamish. Proceeds will be used by the company to validate its suite of Bacterial Cybergenetics technologies in vivo. These include Nemesis Symbiotics for the reversal of antibiotic resistance and Transmids for their clinical and industrial delivery.

Nemesis believes that attempts to develop new antibiotics to kill bacteria are only short-term solutions and are doomed as natural selection pressure will result in selection for resistance. Instead, the company 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.

The Nemesis approach has also been proven to be effective in stopping horizontal resistance-gene transfer in bacteria, offering the potential, via probiotic administration, for prevention of infection with AMR bacteria.

Nemesis Cybergenetics© technologies use modified, multiplexed programmable RNA-guided endonucleases – the first of which has been proven to inactivate resistance to 8 families of beta-lactam antibiotics including targeting extended spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBL), carbapenemases, and metallo-beta-lactamases.

Rainbow’s Investment Director, Oliver Sexton said:

“Nemesis has world-leading technology. Its platform has been shown to return vulnerability to antibiotics in clinical isolates. With this funding, Nemesis can take the programme closer to the clinic and revolutionise the race to beat antibiotic resistance”.

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.”

Commenting on the funding, Nemesis CEO Dr Frank Massam thanked the syndicate and said he was: