Epitome Therapeutics Launches with €4 Million in Total Funding Following Oversubscribed Pre-Seed Round

• €4 million in total funding comprising an oversubscribed €2 million pre-seed round co-led by XISTA Science Ventures and Caesar Ventures and €2 million in non-dilutive grant funding
• EMBL spin-off developing CADENCE, a next-generation epigenome editing platform that enables the precise regulation of gene expression

Vienna, Austria, 30 June 2026 – Epitome Therapeutics, a biotechnology company advancing precision epigenome editing for programmable gene expression, today announced its launch with a total funding of €4 million, comprising an oversubscribed €2 million pre-seed round and €2 million in non-dilutive grant funding. The pre-seed round was co-led by XISTA Science Ventures and Caesar Ventures, with further participation from Navec Venture Holding GmbH. Additional funding was secured through competitive grants, including support from the Austrian federal development and financing bank AWS and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance Epitome Therapeutics’ development programmes toward drug candidate nomination, expand the technological scope of the CADENCE platform, and grow the company's scientific and operational team.

“We are launching Epitome Therapeutics with the support of a strong group of investors and partners,” said Dr. Guido Gualdoni, Co-Founder and CEO of Epitome Therapeutics. “Completing an oversubscribed financing is a strong endorsement of both our team and the potential of the CADENCE platform. The new funding enables us to build the company around CADENCE and translate our science into the first development programmes. Our immediate focus is to advance the platform, expand our team, and work toward the selection of our first drug candidate.”

Founded in 2025 by Dr. Guido Gualdoni and Dr. Jamie Hackett as a spin-off from EMBL, Europe’s leading laboratory for the life sciences, Epitome Therapeutics is developing a new therapeutic approach based on the precise regulation of gene expression. While recent advances have highlighted the potential of gene silencing, many diseases require restoring, increasing or fine-tuning gene activity, creating a need for therapeutic approaches capable of more precise control of gene expression.

“Genes do not simply need to be ON or OFF – they need to be expressed at the right level,” said Dr. Jamie Hackett, Co-Founder and CSO of Epitome Therapeutics. “Many diseases arise when that balance is disrupted. The CADENCE platform enables precise control of gene dosage, allowing us to restore activity of specific genes to therapeutically meaningful levels. We believe this precision medicine approach represents a fundamentally new therapeutic modality to treat genetic and complex disease.”

Epitome Therapeutics’ proprietary epigenome editing platform enables the precise, durable and calibrated activation of gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence. Through its modular architecture, built around a library of engineered epigenetic effectors, the platform is designed to tailor gene activation to specific biological contexts, with the aim of achieving greater precision, flexibility and safety than earlier approaches. CADENCE addresses important limitations of existing gene activation technologies and is being developed for diseases driven by dysregulated gene activity, including rare and metabolic disorders.

Epitome Therapeutics’ technology is based on research conducted at EMBL Rome, including discoveries reported in a landmark 2024 Nature Genetics paper¹, and is supported by intellectual property exclusively licensed from EMBL.

Alexander Schwartz, Partner at XISTA Science Ventures, commented: “We were impressed by the breakthrough nature of Epitome Therapeutics’ approach to epigenome editing, especially its focus on targeted upregulation, and by the team’s ambition to translate this science into therapeutically relevant programmes. We are delighted to be amongst the first to support the company as it achieves the first development milestones and as the field continues to gain momentum.”

“With our investment in Epitome Therapeutics, we are backing an exceptional team that has rethought gene regulation. What convinced us is the rare combination of scientific depth and entrepreneurial experience around Guido and Jamie. We are delighted to support the team as an investor in their first major financing round,” added Gregor Unger, Managing Partner at Caesar Ventures.

About Epitome Therapeutics

Epitome Therapeutics is an early-stage biotechnology company based in Vienna, Austria. Founded in 2025 as a spin-off from EMBL Rome, the company is developing CADENCE, a next-generation epigenome editing platform designed to enable precise, durable and context-dependent control of gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence. By advancing a programmable approach to gene activation, Epitome aims to establish a new therapeutic modality for diseases driven by dysregulated gene activity, including rare and metabolic disorders.

For more information, please visit www.epitome-tx.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

About XISTA Science Ventures

XISTA Science Ventures (XSV) is an Austria-based venture fund investing in early-stage life science and deeptech startups across Europe. With a deep understanding of both scientific and investor perspectives, XSV is an active partner to its portfolio companies, providing support for founders in realizing deep-tech ideas and scaling enterprises. The fund's diverse portfolio spans the full breadth of science, in fields such as biotechnology, medtech, materials science, and software. XSV is embedded in the innovation system around the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). www.xista.vc

About Caesar Ventures

caesar. is a German early-stage venture capital fund backing exceptional teams with conviction earned through unusually deep founder diligence. Sector-agnostic by design, we frequently (co-)lead first rounds and build ownership before market consensus forms. We invest where technology strengthens Europe's real economy.

Contacts

Epitome Therapeutics
Dr. Guido Gualdoni, CEO
office@epitome-tx.com

Media Contact 

MC Services AG
Dr. Cora Kaiser, Dr. Johanna Kobler
+49 89 210 228 0
epitome-tx@mc-services.eu

¹ Policarpi et al., Nature Genetics 56, 1168-1180 (2024), doi.org/10.1038/s41588-024-01706-w