Theolytics awarded €8 million in Horizon Europe 2025 grant funding

Theolytics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation oncolytic immunotherapies, has been awarded, pending final negotiation, €8 million in non-dilutive grant funding from Horizon Europe 2025, the European Union’s flagship research and innovation funding programme.

Horizon Europe 2025 is supporting high-impact clinical-stage projects aimed at improving patient outcomes and strengthening Europe’s scientific leadership. The grant to Theolytics will provide significant financial support to advance the company’s Phase 2 OCTOPOD-IV clinical trial evaluating THEO-260, its novel therapeutic candidate designed to address unmet needs in patients with advanced ovarian cancer.

Positioned to tackle the complex, immune-suppressed nature of advanced solid tumours, THEO-260 is an oncolytic immunotherapy designed for effective killing of both cancer cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), while inducing immune activation. Platinum-resistant ovarian cancer represents a prototype of a broader category of stroma-rich solid tumours for which THEO-260 is being developed.

Margaret Duffy, CSO and Co-founder of Theolytics, said:

Our collective success with this grant award reflects the extraordinary work being done by the team at Theolytics, and the calibre of our clinical and translational partner centres. The Horizon Europe award validates both the scientific rationale behind our THEO-260 programme and the huge potential of its novel oncolytic and ‘CAF-lytic’ mechanism to address a significant unmet need in stroma-rich solid cancers. By integrating advanced translational analyses into our clinical trial design, we will clinically demonstrate the differentiated mechanism of action of THEO-260 and provide key data to advance this programme and deliver true impact for cancer patients.

This highly competitive Horizon Europe 2025 award follows a rigorous grant review process and highlights the company’s innovative science, strong technical area expertise, clear clinical development plan and the opportunity for THEO-260 to address a clear unmet patient need.

The grant application was coordinated with several major partners, expert clinical and translational centres involved in the OCTOPOD-IV study and includes the University of Navarra, Catalan Institute of Oncology in Spain; the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Canada; and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London, UK. Two thirds of the funds will be received directly by Theolytics to advance the OCTOPOD-IV Phase 2a expansion trial, and the other third will be deployed directly to the partners in support of their work on the trial.

OCTOPOD-IV (NCT06618235) is a first-in-human, multi-centre trial to assess safety, tolerability and preliminary efficacy of THEO-260 in patients with high-grade serous ovarian or endometrioid cancer. In addition, the trial is designed to determine the recommended Phase 2 dose and demonstrate THEO-260’s differentiated cancer/cancer-associated fibroblast-lytic mechanism of action in patients through comprehensive biomarker analysis.

Prof Alan Melcher, Professor of Translational Immunotherapy at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said:

The differentiated mechanism of action – targeting the stroma and inducing immune activity in the suppressed tumour microenvironment (TME) - of this oncolytic immunotherapy THEO-260 offers the potential to provide an important new treatment option for patients with advanced solid tumours. We are pleased to support the OCTOPOD-IV study, for which the ICR will provide important translational data to assess this novel and promising approach.

Dr Antonio González, Director of the Department of Medical Oncology and Cancer Center at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, and President of the Spanish Cooperative Group for Gynaecological Cancer Research, added:

We see many women with advanced platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, whose life expectancy is typically only a year or less. There remains a serious lack of effective treatment options for these women, and so we are hopeful that THEO-260 may bring an advance in therapy that will improve and extend the lives of our patients.

Recruitment at UK and Spanish clinical sites for OCTOPOD-IV is ongoing and will now expand into further international centres (including additional sites in Spain and Canada). A second clinical trial (OCTOPOD-IP) in the US, which will investigate intraperitoneal (IP) delivery of THEO-260 to advanced ovarian cancer patients, has also been initiated in collaboration with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (NCT07211659).