• Market Insyte Digest
  • Posts
  • Seed Watch: Startup Seeking to Advance Cancer Treatment Grabs the Headlines

Seed Watch: Startup Seeking to Advance Cancer Treatment Grabs the Headlines

Author

Ofodile Iloanya
April 28, 2025

Welcome to our weekly edition of Seed Watch- a segment of Market Insyte Digest focused on sharing some of the latest and most intriguing Pre-seed & Seed funding news grabbing the headlines in the startup world.

Early-stage startups attracted $287 million in VC funding this week. Find out the top 3 deals from this week that caught our eye.

  • Startup Name: Avidicure

  • Industry: Healthtech

  • Region: Netherlands

  • Amount (USD): $50 million

  • The problem it is solving: Existing cancer immunotherapies often lack precision, potency, and safety, leading to limited efficacy or unacceptable side effects.

  • What the Funds Will Be Spent On: Funds will be used to advance AVC-S-101 into clinical trials; Expand pipeline of oncology treatments based on their proprietary platform; Present preclinical data at AACR and ASCO 2025; Strengthen R&D and commercial readiness

  • Startup Name: Synthetic Design Lab

  • Industry: Healthtech

  • Region: United States

  • Amount (USD): $20 million

  • The problem it is solving: Traditional Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) are limited by suboptimal payload delivery and targeting constraints (e.g., HER2-only efficacy).

  • What the Funds Will Be Spent On: Funds will be used to advance first SYNTHBODY therapeutic into clinical trials in 2026; Continue platform innovation and target discovery; Scale R&D teams and AI/synthetic biology integrations

  • Startup Name: AuthMind

  • Industry: Cybersecurity

  • Region: United States

  • Amount (USD): $19.3 million

  • The problem it is solving: Traditional identity security tools are failing to detect modern identity-based threats—especially those in multi-cloud, hybrid, and SaaS environments—due to growing complexity, shadow IT, and AI-driven attacks.

  • What the Funds Will Be Spent On: Funds will be used to Accelerate go-to-market operations; Fuel product innovation; Expand enterprise adoption across cloud-forward and AI-integrated organizations.