Cerberus Ventures and YZR Capital co-lead a $5M seed round, alongside $2M in non-dilutive funding from the Research Council of Norway
TRONDHEIM, Norway--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#DrugDiscovery--Vitroscope AS, a biotech company developing perfusion platforms for studying immune activity, treatment responses and disease mechanisms in real time, has raised $7 million, comprising a $5 million seed round and $2 million in non-dilutive funding. The funding will support the commercial rollout of vitro.alive, the company’s benchtop platform, and validation of vitro.scale, its higher-throughput platform. Customer testing of vitro.scale is expected to begin in 2027, ahead of its planned 2028 launch.
Cerberus Ventures and YZR Capital co-led the seed round, with participation from Arcas Ventures, Golden Egg Check, Devico Invest and angel investors, including Carles Reina, Fàtima Godall and Oskari Pétas. The Research Council of Norway is providing the non-dilutive funding. Vitroscope has raised $8.8 million to date.
Researchers increasingly use sophisticated models, including organoids and fresh human tissue. Yet static well plates cannot replicate the flow and oxygen conditions these models need, limiting tissue viability, experimental duration and data collection. Vitroscope’s automated perfusion platform maintains controlled flow through living tissue, enabling longer experiments and more data for drug discovery.
Carlo Kriesi, Co-founder and CEO of Vitroscope, says: “We started Vitroscope because living tissue cannot be reduced to a snapshot. Its behavior 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.”
Vitroscope and Instant Bio maintained vascularized human brain organoids under perfusion for seven days with vitro.alive. In separate work, primary human liver cells formed organized tissue on the platform but not in standard well plates. Another study using the technology found that kidney cells lacking AdipoR1, a receptor linked to diabetic kidney disease, showed impaired responses to physiological fluid flow.
Chenny Zhang, Managing Director at Cerberus Ventures, says: “Biology isn’t static, but much of the way we study it still is. Vitroscope is changing that by enabling researchers to observe living tissue over time, generating the rich, longitudinal data that will become increasingly valuable in an AI-driven world.”
Vitroscope’s vitro.alive combines programmable perfusion, real-time control of oxygen, pH and temperature, and live-cell imaging in a benchtop platform for six independent, parallel experiments. The platform works with standard inverted microscopes and allows users to keep their existing tissue models. Currently in development, vitro.scale will support 96 parallel experiments. Vitroscope holds multiple international patents covering its core technology and methods.
Markus Feuerecker, Founding and Managing Partner at YZR Capital, says: “Drug discovery and development need data that allows researchers to actually predict how patients will respond, and Vitroscope generates it at the source. Its platform is physical AI infrastructure: every experiment on living human tissue produces proprietary, comparable data that compounds over time. For us at YZR Capital, Vitroscope is a key building block in rewiring the pharma value chain, turning cell-level insight into human-relevant evidence long before the first clinical trial.”
Vitroscope is expanding its commercial reach as regulators recognize human-relevant research models. In September 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration clarified that non-animal methods can support safety testing of drugs and biological products where appropriate.
About Vitroscope
Vitroscope enables drug discovery and translational research teams to study immune activity, treatment responses and disease mechanisms in real time. Its benchtop system, vitro.alive, keeps living tissue and vascularized organoids viable for days under controlled perfusion, combining live-cell imaging with oxygen, pH and temperature sensing to generate more longitudinal data from scarce biological samples. Vitroscope is based in Trondheim, Norway. Learn more at www.vitroscope.com.
About Cerberus Ventures
Cerberus Ventures is an early-stage investor backing founders challenging assumptions to transform industries and society for the better. We believe the future will be shaped by bold breakthroughs across the critical domains of intelligence, energy and resources, digital infrastructure, computing, and biotech. As the venture arm of Cerberus Capital Management, an approximately $74 billion global investment firm, we bring the full weight of experience, networks, and capital to help consequential companies tackle high-stakes problems. Learn more at: www.cerberusventures.com.
About YZR Capital
YZR Capital is a leading European HealthTech focused venture capital firm with a strong emphasis on AI in healthcare. The firm invests in European companies building technology-driven solutions to improve patient care and increase efficiency and outcomes across healthcare systems. YZR Capital’s mission is to support founders in building category-leading healthcare companies with global relevance. YZR Capital is an early lead investor in companies such as Biorce, Scan.com, and Esper.
Contacts
Media Contact
Claudia Pricop
Communications Advisor for Vitroscope
claudia@mintberriesstudio.com
+46 (0)723 121 226
