Kanvas Biosciences raises $48 million to advance microbiome cancer therapies

Kanvas Biosciences is taking a major step forward in microbiome therapeutics with the announcement of $48 million in Series A funding, which will support a clinical trial later this year for the company's lead cancer immunotherapy treatment.

The startup, whose foundational technology emerged from research at Cornell University, is also advancing additional therapies targeting inflammation and malnutrition-related gut disease.

Kanvas was founded by Cornell Ph.D. student Hao Shi, professor Iwijn De Vlaminck, and medical microbiologist Matt Cheng after the team developed HiPR-FISH, a breakthrough imaging platform capable of mapping the gut microbiome in unprecedented detail. The technology, which the team licensed through Cornell's Center for Technology Licensing, allows researchers to identify not only which microbes are present in the gut, but exactly where they live and how they interact with human cells and one another.

"I began my career as a physician and always dreamed of being able to develop new drugs that could help the patients I hadn't been able to treat with existing therapies," said Matthew Cheng, co-founder and CEO of Kanvas Biosciences. "Most physicians never get the opportunity to realize this dream, so it's an incredible privilege to bring Kanvas' technology to the broader live biotherapeutic product market."

Kanvas' full-stack technology platform is designed to sharpen the focus of microbiome drug discovery by combining advanced spatial mapping with integrated manufacturing capabilities. The company's discovery engine allows researchers to visualize the complex interactions between the microbiome and its host in unprecedented detail, offering new insight into a critical biological system that has historically been difficult to fully understand.

Those insights are now being transformed into live biotherapeutics, pills containing dozens of living microbial strains designed to restore balance in the gut and improve immune response. Kanvas' lead therapy is based on roughly 50 strains of bacteria isolated from a 76-year-old stage 4 colorectal cancer patient who experienced a complete recovery after treatment with Keytruda, an immunotherapy drug.

The company hopes its treatment will improve the success of cancer immunotherapy, which currently works for only a small percentage of patients. Kanvas is also advancing therapies aimed at reducing colon inflammation caused by immunotherapy and treating environmental enteric dysfunction, a severe malnutrition-related condition affecting millions of children worldwide. That global health initiative is being developed in partnership with the Gates Foundation.

The funding round was co-led by DCVC and Lions Capital, with participation from more than a dozen other investors. Investors see Kanvas as one of the few microbiome startups positioned to overcome the scientific and manufacturing hurdles that have stalled the field in recent years.

"I thought this was the microbiome company that could realize the promise of the microbiome by solving all the problems that previous microbiome companies have not solved," said Jason Pontin, General Partner at DCVC.

Kanvas was previously a client of Cornell's Center for Life Science Ventures and graduated from the incubator in 2022.