By Hamza Faisal
Basel-based Nouscom has closed an oversubscribed €120 million (about $135 million) Series D financing to push one of the most ambitious ideas in oncology closer to reality: a vaccine that intercepts cancer before it ever develops.
The round, announced on Monday, was co-led by M Ventures and Revelation Partners. New investors include Angelini Industries, the European Investment Bank through its Aurea co-investment facility, and Neva SGR of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group — with all existing backers, among them 5AM Ventures, Andera Partners, Bpifrance, EQT Life Sciences, and Versant Ventures, joining in as well.
A vaccine against cancer — before it exists
Nouscom's lead program, NOUS-209, is an off-the-shelf immunotherapy built from neoantigens: protein fragments that appear only on cancerous cells, never on healthy ones. Two viral vectors deliver 209 shared frameshift peptide neoantigens, training the immune system to hunt down cells carrying mismatch repair deficiency and microsatellite instability — the genetic hallmarks of Lynch syndrome cancers.
Lynch syndrome is one of the most common hereditary cancer conditions, yet remains largely invisible. An estimated 1.1 to 1.2 million people in the United States carry the mutations, and as many as 95 percent do not know it. Their lifetime colorectal cancer risk runs between 50 and 80 percent, alongside sharply elevated risks of endometrial and other cancers. Today, carriers are offered little beyond regular surveillance and preventive surgery.
"Over two million LS carriers live with up to an 80% lifetime cancer risk and nothing to offer them but surveillance and surgery," said Marina Udier, Nouscom's chief executive. "We built Nouscom to change that equation."
Early data: vaccinated carriers stayed cancer-free
The fundraising arrives alongside long-term data from a Phase 1b/2 trial that the company describes as encouraging. Every evaluable Lynch syndrome carrier dosed with NOUS-209 remained free of advanced adenomas and colorectal cancer after follow-up stretching one to two years — one-year data on 43 patients and two-year data on 17 participants, all verified by colonoscopy.
The trial also produced evidence of broad, potent, and durable anti-neoantigen T-cell responses, with annual retreatment strengthening them further. The full dataset will be presented at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Madrid on October 23–27 by the study's principal investigator, Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Where the money goes
The Series D will fund a single, global, registration-enabling clinical trial of NOUS-209 for cancer interception in Lynch syndrome carriers — a program the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already granted Fast Track designation. While cancer treatment attracts enormous venture capital, prevention and interception remain a far less developed commercial category, and Nouscom's raise stands among the largest European oncology financings of the year.
By Hamza Faisal
