- Nouscom raised $135M in a Series D co-led by M Ventures and Revelation Partners.
- The funding pays for a global trial of its NOUS-209 vaccine in Lynch syndrome carriers.
- Early data are encouraging, but the trial had no control group, so prevention is unproven.
Nouscom’s co-founder and original chief executive, Riccardo Cortese, died in 2017, the year after Marina Udier joined the Swiss biotech as chief operating officer. Udier became interim chief executive in May 2019, and the board later made the job permanent.
The company just closed an oversubscribed Series D of $135 million to determine whether a vaccine can prevent cancer before it starts.
M Ventures and Revelation Partners co-led the round. Angelini Industries, through Angelini Investments, the European Investment Bank, through its Aurea co-investment facility with Angelini Ventures, and Neva SGR, part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, joined as new investors.
All existing backers participated: 5AM Ventures, Andera Partners, Angelini Ventures, EQT Life Sciences, Indaco Venture Partners, Panakes Partners, Versant Ventures, XGEN Ventures, Bpifrance through its InnoBio2 fund, and CDP Venture Capital through its Large Ventures Fund.
The money funds one global, registration-enabling trial of NOUS-209, an off-the-shelf vaccine for people with Lynch syndrome. Registration-enabling means the study is designed to support a regulatory approval application. The US Food and Drug Administration granted Fast Track designation on June 1, 2026, a status for drugs that address a serious condition with significant unmet medical need.
“Over two million [Lynch syndrome] carriers live with up to an 80% lifetime cancer risk and nothing to offer them but surveillance and surgery,” said Udier, who holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Yale and previously worked at Novartis, McKinsey, and Versant Ventures.
“We built Nouscom to change that equation. This financing, alongside the data we are presenting at ESMO [the European Society for Medical Oncology congress], puts us closer to a world where cancer is stopped before it starts. I am grateful to our new and existing investors for backing that conviction, and to the team behind NOUS-209,” she added.
What the Lynch syndrome data show, and what they do not
Lynch syndrome is an inherited condition that affects roughly one in 300 people and carries a lifetime cancer risk of up to 80%, according to the Nature Medicine paper on the trial. Nouscom puts the colorectal cancer risk for carriers at up to 50%, against 2% in the general population.
The company says carriers are left with frequent colonoscopies and elective surgery, and argues that screening has not been shown to reduce cancer incidence.
NOUS-209 uses two viral vectors to deliver 209 shared frameshift neoantigens, which are markers found on cancer cells but not healthy ones. The aim is to train T cells to attack cancerous and precancerous cells before tumours form.
In the Phase 1b/2 trial, 45 healthy carriers received a priming dose, then a booster eight weeks later. All 37 participants whose immune responses could be evaluated showed a neoantigen-specific response, still detectable after one year in 85% of participants. Fatigue reached grade three in 4% of participants.
Shared targets versus tailor-made vaccines
Cancer vaccines have a long and largely unsuccessful history, as Fierce Biotech noted in its coverage of the round. Phase 3 melanoma data from Merck & Co. and Moderna have raised expectations for the field. Those vaccines are tailored to each patient’s tumour. NOUS-209 targets neoantigens that recur across people with Lynch syndrome, so one product made in advance can serve every carrier.
The off-the-shelf vaccine has been Nouscom’s priority for a decade. A €42 million Series B in November 2017 was earmarked to take it into the clinic. The €120 million Series D compares with a €75.8 million Series C, which Angelini Ventures extended in March 2024.
Other European oncology developers have raised smaller rounds. Finnish biotech TILT Biotherapeutics raised $25.6 million in May 2025 to start a Phase 2 trial in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. Munich-based mbiomics completed a 30 million euros Series A on April 28, 2026, to build manufacturing for its melanoma co-therapy, as TFN reported.
The wider European biotech market provides context for the round. The European Commission and the EIB Group also aim to mobilise 10 billion euros for biotech and life sciences in 2026 and 2027 through an initiative called BioTechEU.
Who is backing the trial
M Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Germany’s Merck Group, co-led the Series C in November 2023 with Andera Partners and Bpifrance, and has now co-led the Series D. It is separate from US-based Merck & Co. Revelation Partners took part in the Series C.
Hakan Goker, managing director and head of biotechnology investments at M Ventures, said: “What sets Nouscom apart is its unique cancer interception approach and the platform that enables it. Maturing clinical evidence and a regulatory-aligned path into a registration-enabling trial in such an [uncharted] space is a rare combination for a private biotech company and the commitment of the investor syndicate underpins this deep conviction.”
Angelini Industries, an Italian group founded in Ancona in 1919, followed Nouscom from the Series C through Angelini Ventures, which also invested in the Series D.
Sergio Marullo di Condojanni, chief executive of Angelini Industries and vice president of Angelini Investments, noted: “Angelini Industries is becoming an increasingly innovation-driven group competing on a global scale, bringing together the search for companies set to shape the future of healthcare with the research and pharmaceutical assets of our industrial heritage. We see significant potential in Nouscom’s pioneering approach to cancer prevention in Lynch syndrome and we are proud to support its outstanding team.”
Without a control group, the Phase 1b/2 data cannot separate the vaccine’s effect from the disease’s natural course. If NOUS-209 works, Lynch syndrome carriers could get an option beyond scans and surgery.
