Magnitude Biosciences secures £1.3m to accelerate VivoScan’s transition to mainstream drug discovery

London: Magnitude Biosciences raises £1.3m to scale up its VivoScan platform, using nematode worms and AI to deliver faster, richer biological insights for drug discovery, potentially revolutionising early-stage research and reducing reliance on traditional mammalian models.

Magnitude Biosciences has raised £1.3m to push its VivoScan platform from promising spinout to a more commercial drug-discovery tool. The company argues that whole-organism screening in nematode worms can produce richer biological insight than standard cell-based assays, potentially improving hit quality earlier in the pipeline. If it works at scale, the approach could shorten development timelines and sharpen investment decisions in a sector under pressure to find better predictive models.

According to the company, VivoScan combines C. elegans with imaging, machine learning, agentic AI, automation and robotics to generate data in weeks rather than years. That is a bold promise in an industry where many preclinical programmes still rely on narrow read-outs and expensive mammalian studies before candidates are discarded.

Northstar Ventures led the round through the North East Spinout Inspire Fund, the North East Innovation Fund and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund, alongside Maven’s regional vehicles and angel backers. The financing also unlocks a further £217,000 grant from Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership scheme.

Dr Fozia Saleem, chief executive, said the goal is to screen millions of compounds in a whole organism, a milestone that would put Magnitude in a small and potentially valuable niche as pharmaceutical groups look for more predictive, non-mammalian models.