Bath cancer spin-out Revolver raises £572K to drug the "undruggable"
What's the deal? Revolver TherapeuticsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a University of Bath spin-out developing cancer treatments, has raised £572,000 in seed funding. QantXDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → led the round, with follow-on backing from the UK Innovation & Science Seed FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (uki2s) and the University of Bath.
What's the endgame? Revolver targets transcription factors — proteins that regulate genes and drive tumour growth but have long been considered "undruggable" because they sit deep in the cell's nucleus and lack the binding pockets conventional drugs need. Its Transcription Block Survival platform, spun out of Bath, designs peptides that penetrate cells and switch off these targets. The new money will fund the platform and a pipeline of colorectal cancer treatments.
Why now? The round is a follow-on. uki2s first backed Revolver in 2024, and Revolver says it has since shown it can stop tumour cells growing in the lab while getting its molecules inside cells.
What the backers say: "Revolver is going after targets that have defeated drug discovery for decades — that's exactly the kind of hard science QantX exists to back," said Richard Haycock, co-founder and chief executive officer of QantX.
What could go wrong? Revolver's progress so far is pre-clinical. Global cancer-research investment fell year on year from 2016 to 2020, and most funding still flows to early-stage work — leaving translational science to prove it can reach patients.
The signal: Investor appetite for cancer science remains strongest where research meets company-building, from early spin-outs to larger raises like Trogenix's recent £70m Series A. Revolver's seed round is a small but early bet on cracking a target that has resisted drugs for decades.
Read more: Bath Newseum
Image credit: Libertas Academica
