Mitra Bio Raises £4.7M to Pioneer Non-Invasive Skin Epigenetics Testing for Longevity and Skincare
December 18, 2024
Mitra Bio, the London-based biotech company pioneering non-invasive skin epigenetic testing, has raised £4.7M to accelerate the commercialisation of its platform and expand its client base across the skincare, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. The round was supported by investors including Khosla Ventures, BlackOx Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Merian Ventures, First In Ventures, Illumina Accelerator, and InnovateUK — a syndicate reflecting both the scientific credibility and commercial potential of Mitra Bio’s approach to skin longevity research.
The company was founded in 2020 by Shakiba Kaveh (CEO) and Cristiana Banila (CSO), who met through Entrepreneur First, one of the world’s leading talent investor programmes. Kaveh had spent years inside L’Oréal Research & Innovation in Paris, where she became captivated by the science of skin ageing and the enormous resources the industry invested in understanding it — without the biological tools to measure outcomes rigorously. Banila, meanwhile, had been developing non-invasive molecular sampling methods originally designed for cervical cancer screening. Together, they recognised that the same non-invasive approach could be applied to skin: replacing painful, scarring biopsies with a simple adhesive tape strip that collects biological material quickly and painlessly, and then feeding that material through next-generation sequencing to extract rich epigenetic data.
The core problem Mitra Bio addresses is one that the £500 billion global skincare industry has long struggled with: it is genuinely difficult to know whether a product or intervention is working at the biological level. Consumer claims around anti-ageing treatments are typically backed by subjective assessments or superficial measurements, rather than the kind of molecular evidence that could tell a brand whether their formulation is actually slowing the rate of epigenetic ageing in skin tissue, reducing UV-induced DNA methylation changes, or modulating inflammatory pathways. The absence of validated biomarkers means that high-end skincare companies spend enormous sums on clinical trials whose outcomes remain scientifically ambiguous, and pharmaceutical companies developing dermatological therapeutics face long development cycles without reliable objective endpoints. Mitra Bio’s platform changes that calculus. Its patent-pending tape-strip sampling workflow collects large quantities of keratinocyte-rich biological material from the skin surface in a process that takes minutes and causes no discomfort. That material is then processed through the company’s proprietary next-generation sequencing pipeline to produce a detailed read-out of epigenetic markers — including DNA methylation patterns that serve as proxies for biological skin age, inflammation levels, UV damage accumulation, and the skin’s responsiveness to specific actives.
Traction has been building steadily. Mitra Bio has delivered validated trials with major skincare companies, demonstrating its ability to detect statistically significant changes in epigenetic markers in response to treatment. In 2022 it won a £530k Innovate UK project with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust to develop epigenetics-based molecular diagnostics for melanoma detection — a programme that extends the platform’s reach from cosmetics into oncology. The company was also selected for Illumina Accelerator’s second global funding cycle, giving it access to Illumina’s world-class sequencing infrastructure and global life sciences network. In June 2025, it was awarded a €2.5m European Innovation Council grant to accelerate non-invasive epigenetics-based melanoma detection across Europe, further validating the scientific rigour of its approach and its growing footprint in clinical applications.
The £4.7M raise provides Mitra Bio with the runway to scale its laboratory operations, build out its bioinformatics capabilities, and deepen its commercial partnerships with pharmaceutical and skincare clients. The company is also expanding its scientific advisory network and intends to publish peer-reviewed research from its growing biomarker dataset — an asset that compounds in value with every trial run on the platform. With longevity science emerging as one of the most heavily funded areas in global life sciences, and the skincare industry increasingly under pressure to substantiate its anti-ageing claims with clinical-grade evidence, Mitra Bio is positioned at exactly the right intersection.
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