Antibody discovery often stalls at the protein stage, where expression, purification, and validation remain fragmented and time-intensive. Nuclera aims to consolidate these steps into a single, integrated workflow.
Nuclera, a biotech startup, has secured an additional $12 million in Series C financing to compress drug discovery timelines by transforming how scientists access functional proteins. The extension funding brings the company’s total Series C funding to $87 million.
The latest funding round was led by Elevage Medical Technologies and biotech entrepreneur Jonathan Milner, with continued backing from the British Business Bank and GK Goh.
Rather than fueling broad expansion, the capital accelerates the development of antibody-specific capabilities within Nuclera’s eProtein Discovery benchtop system. With the latest funding extension, the company is doubling down on a platform designed to turn months of iteration into days, reshaping how drug discovery moves from idea to impact.
Building end-to-end antibody discovery
Founded in 2013 at the University of Cambridge by Michael Chen, Jiahao Huang, and Gordon Herling-McInroy, Nuclera was built around a simple insight that scientific progress too often waits on protein.
The enhanced eProtein Discovery system will support in-house full-format antibody expression, purification, and binding validation. High-throughput, standardised outputs also create a foundation for generating robust datasets, an increasingly critical requirement as AI-driven protein engineering gains traction.
By integrating these antibody workflows, Nucler’s platform is an infrastructure for next-generation discovery. Scalable, high-quality protein data is essential for training predictive models in biologics, and the company’s system is designed to produce exactly that.
Momentum in recent times
The previous Series C round of $75 million was closed in 2024. Since then, Nuclera has steadily expanded both capability and reach. The company introduced a membrane protein workflow, broadened customer access across APAC and the Middle East, and entered a collaboration with Cytiva to shorten the path from genetic sequence to fully characterised proteins.
Commercial validation has followed. Installation of the eProtein Discovery system at Domainex marked its first deployment within a contract research organisation, demonstrating real-world demand for faster, more reliable protein production services.
Combining unique cell-free expression systems, novel digital microfluidics, and robust screening data, eProtein Discovery provides clear guidance on which protein has the best chance of success early on, thereby reducing the time, cost, and uncertainty traditionally associated with protein expression and purification.
Dr Michael Chen, CEO and co-founder, Nuclera, said:“This financing underscores our growing momentum and demonstrates that we are expanding eProtein Discovery into one of the fastest-growing segments of biologics R&D. Scientists increasingly require scalable, high-quality datasets to power AI models in biologics discovery. We are positioning Nuclera to become a foundational platform for the future of protein and antibody engineering, ultimately accelerating therapeutic discovery timelines.”
