Vienna-based Epitome Therapeutics, a BioTech company advancing precision epigenome editing for programmable gene expression, today announced a total funding of €4 million to advance development programmes and grow the company’s team. The pre-seed round, comprising an oversubscribed €2 million pre-seed round and €2 million in non-dilutive grant funding, was co-led
Ethan Conroy
Vienna-based Epitome Therapeutics, a BioTech company advancing precision epigenome editing for programmable gene expression, today announced a total funding of €4 million to advance development programmes and grow the company’s team.
The pre-seed round, comprising an oversubscribed €2 million pre-seed round and €2 million in non-dilutive grant funding, was co-led by XISTA Science Ventures and Caesar Ventures, with further participation from Navec Venture Holding GmbH.
“We are launching Epitome Therapeutics with the support of a strong group of investors and partners,” said Dr. Guido Gualdoni, co-founder and CEO of Epitome Therapeutics.
“Completing an oversubscribed financing is a strong endorsement of both our team and the potential of the CADENCE platform. The new funding enables us to build the company around CADENCE and translate our science into the first development programmes. Our immediate focus is to advance the platform, expand our team, and work toward the selection of our first drug candidate.”
Founded in 2025 by Dr. Gualdoni and CSO Dr. Jamie Hackett as a spin-off from European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Europe’s leading laboratory for the life sciences, Epitome Therapeutics is developing a new therapeutic approach based on the precise regulation of gene expression.
Epitome Therapeutics’ €4 million pre-seed financing sits within a 2026 European BioTech funding environment in which EU-Startups has reported capital flowing into early-stage therapeutic platforms, gene and cell therapy infrastructure, RNA-related approaches, AI-enabled drug discovery and adjacent preclinical biology.
Such biotech financings this year include Cambridge-based TRIMTECH Therapeutics’ €41 million seed round for its neurodegenerative disease platform and iDEL Therapeutics’ €9 million seed financing to advance cancer therapeutics.
Based in Bedford, UK, Tozaro’s February announcement of a €6.9 million round for cell and gene therapy manufacturing, and Ternary Therapeutics’ €4.1 million seed round focused on molecular-glue drug discovery reflect continued investor appetite for platform-based biotechnology companies developing next-generation therapeutic technologies.
“We were impressed by the breakthrough nature of Epitome Therapeutics’ approach to epigenome editing, especially its focus on targeted upregulation, and by the team’s ambition to translate this science into therapeutically relevant programmes,
“We are delighted to be amongst the first to support the company as it achieves the first development milestones and as the field continues to gain momentum,” said Alexander Schwartz, Partner at XISTA Science Ventures.
While recent advances have highlighted the potential of gene silencing, many diseases require restoring, increasing or fine-tuning gene activity, creating a need for therapeutic approaches capable of more precise control of gene expression.
The company says their proprietary epigenome editing platform enables the precise, durable and calibrated activation of gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence.
Through its modular architecture, built around a library of engineered epigenetic effectors, the platform is designed to tailor gene activation to specific biological contexts, with the aim of achieving greater precision, flexibility and safety than earlier approaches.
