Cancer Research Horizons
Cancer Research Horizons (CRH, trading name for Cancer Research Technology Limited) is a specialist drug discovery, development and commercialisation company wholly owned by Cancer Research UK (CRUK, the world’s leading cancer charity) that fast tracks scientific breakthroughs for patient benefit.
Our CRH Seed Fund (launched June 2022) builds on over 25 years of CRH establishing and growing successful companies (\>60 companies formed and 21 exits to date). Our fund brings innovative cancer ideas together with early stage capital, commercial advice, support with intellectual property, access to experts, mentors and management teams, and introductions to co-investors to maximise the chances of start-ups becoming financially attractive to investors and benefiting cancer patients. We specialise in high tech ideas.
Our aim is to grow the CRH Seed Fund to £30m, and it is currently backed by a commitment of £15.5m from CRUK.
Our CRH Seed Fund Investment Strategy:
Our CRH Seed Fund is an impact-driven, evergreen, venture philanthropy fund investing in promising early-stage opportunities, worldwide. We take a long-term view, so we can take risks where others cannot. We can invest alone or alongside other like-minded investors.
Any financial returns we generate are reinvested back into the fund and into cancer research. Investment decisions are made based on the potential to reach a value inflection point that will leverage and attract high quality follow-on capital that will increase the chances of life-saving cancer treatments, diagnostics and devices reaching the market.
You do not need to be (or have been) a CRUK-funded researcher to secure capital from our fund. We are interested in all ideas that could benefit new cancer patients and fulfil our investment criteria, including new therapeutics, preventative measures, diagnostics, medical devices and AI/data driven solutions.
Funding available is:
- Early-stage validation capital and Pre-Seed capital: up to £150k
- Seed capital: typically £100-500k, with the ability to invest up to £1m on occasion
- Follow-on capital for our seed invested portfolio companies: typically £100-500k, with the ability to invest up to £1m on occasion.
Our seed fund, venture build and portfolio investments benefit from the support of our dedicated seed fund team and wider commercial partnerships team with long-standing track record of sourcing, evaluating and completing spinout and partnering deals. Our seed fund team works alongside an independent investment committee comprising a diverse group of investors, venture builders and experts in science, knowledge transfer and industry.