Kanvas Biosciences Raises $48M in Series A Funding

The company plans to use the funds to run clinical trials for its main immuno-oncology drug candidate, KAN-001, and to grow its commercial partnerships.

A microbiome is made up of microorganisms and their genes that live in the gut, lungs, skin, and other parts of the body. When it doesn’t work properly, it can cause diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, heart problems, and can even affect how cancer patients respond to treatment.

Kanvas can map the locations of microbes and human cells, helping it develop complex live biotherapeutic products (LBPs) composed of multiple microbial species to restore microbiome health. It can also track how these therapies work in the body, solving key challenges in developing effective microbiome treatments.

KAN-001 is a live biotherapeutic product (LBP) designed for cancer patients who do not respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). While more than half of solid tumor patients receive ICIs, only about 10% achieve complete responses. Fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) from responders can sometimes help non responders, but they come with challenges such as safety risks, complex manufacturing and limited scalability. KAN 001 is designed to address these problems and has already demonstrated safety and effectiveness across multiple mouse models and cancer types.

The clinical path has also been de-risked through recent FMT trial results in patients with anti-PD-1 resistant cancers, where donor material linked to KAN-001 strains showed strong engraftment, improved immune response, and no treatment-related colitis. Kanvas is now preparing to start its own clinical trials and begin operations at its new GMP manufacturing facility.

Since announcing its Seed round in 2024, Kanvas has made strong progress. With new funding from the Gates Foundation and other investors, the company is developing a fully synthetic microbiome replacement product to help prevent maternal health issues like undernutrition, low birthweight, and newborn risks.

Kanvas is also preparing for a Phase 1 clinical trial of KAN-004, an immuno-oncology drug aimed at treating ICI-induced colitis. The goal is to help cancer patients stay on ICI therapy longer and improve treatment response.

In addition, Stephen Quake, from Stanford University and a former Chief Science Advisor at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, has joined Kanvas’ board. The company has also released new research showing its spatial imaging platform outperforms standard metagenomics methods, especially in low-biomass samples. Finally, Kanvas has built a new Spectral Lightsheet microscope that produces high-resolution spatial biology data. This helps train its AI system and supports the development of the world’s first microbiome atlas.

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“Creating a brand new microscope capable of collecting spatial biology data at unprecedented scale and quality is a testament to Kanvas’ deep engineering prowess and relentless commitment to unlocking the gut microbiome as a distinct organ that can be safely modified using microbial-based drugs,” said Jason Pontin, General Partner at DCVC and chair of Kanvas’ board. “Kanvas’s ability to generate novel data about host-microbiome interactions is fueling powerful AI models that are helping the company design new cancer treatments, nutritional supplements, and even gastrointestinal restoration products for animals.”

“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 LBP market and begin conducting clinical trials of our lead drug candidate, which offers a new way to improve the therapeutic efficacy and safety of immunotherapy for cancer patients.”

About Kanvas Biosciences

Founded in 2020 by Matthew P. Cheng and Hao Shi, Kanvas Biosciences is a spatial biology company developing a platform for microbiome drug discovery, screening, and manufacturing to accelerate the development of live biotherapeutics. The company can map the microbiome in detail, study host gene expression, and create complex microbial therapies to restore microbiome health and treat microbiome-related diseases.

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