Vitroscope, a Zurich-based biotech company, has secured $7 million in fresh capital to expand its automated perfusion platform designed for drug discovery research. The funding package comprises a $5 million seed round co-led by Cerberus Ventures and YZR Capital, alongside $2 million in non-dilutive funding from the Research Council of Norway.
The capital injection brings the company’s total funding to $8.8 million and will support the commercial rollout of its vitro.alive benchtop platform while advancing development of a higher-throughput variant called vitro.scale.
Advanced Tissue Culture Technology
Vitroscope has developed an automated perfusion system that maintains living human tissue samples in controlled laboratory conditions, enabling researchers to observe tissue behaviour over extended periods rather than capturing static snapshots. The platform addresses a fundamental challenge in drug discovery: the need to test compounds against functional human tissue that responds dynamically to environmental changes.
According to Carlo Kriesi, co-founder of the company: “We started Vitroscope because living tissue cannot be reduced to a snapshot. Its behaviour depends on what is happening around it over time. With vitro.alive, researchers set those conditions themselves and follow how the tissue responds for days. This funding lets us bring this capability to more labs and extend it to higher‑throughput experiments with vitro.scale.”
Scaling Commercial Operations
The seed round was supported by a syndicate of investors including Arcas Ventures, Golden Egg Check, and Devico Invest, alongside angel investors Carles Reina, Fàtima Godall, and Oskari Pétas. The involvement of the Research Council of Norway underscores the strategic importance of the technology to advanced research infrastructure.
The company plans to utilise the funding to expand access to its vitro.alive system across research laboratories and pharmaceutical companies. Simultaneously, Vitroscope is developing vitro.scale, which will enable higher-throughput screening capabilities, potentially accelerating the pace of drug candidate evaluation.
European Innovation Momentum
Vitroscope’s fundraising reflects broader momentum within the European biotech sector, particularly in Switzerland, where the company benefits from proximity to established pharmaceutical hubs and research institutions. The combination of dilutive venture capital and non-dilutive government funding demonstrates the multi-faceted approach European startups are taking to finance growth while preserving equity and maintaining founder control.
The startup’s focus on improving drug discovery workflows aligns with ongoing efforts across Europe to create alternatives to animal testing and reduce the time required to bring therapeutics to market. As regulatory pressure increases for more sophisticated pre-clinical testing methods, platforms like Vitroscope’s are positioned to play a meaningful role in modernising pharmaceutical development processes across the continent.