About Phantom Therapeutics

We are proud to be different

Unique thinking is driving a new approach to one of oncology's most neglected cancers.

Our story
Oncology Research
Our Origin

Born from loss.
Built on conviction.

In November 2024, one of our founders lost their mother after a long battle with cancer of unknown primary. Born from that loss, the founders went searching for answers — deep into the cancer biology, deep into the data, deep into why nothing had changed for these patients in decades.

No biotech or pharmaceutical company anywhere in the world has CUP as its primary disease focus. Not one.

While the field poured its energy into better diagnosis, therapeutic innovation was left behind — and patients were left without options.

The Journey

From tragedy to thesis

November 2024

A personal loss

A founder's mother passes after a long struggle with CUP. A tragedy that would become the catalyst for everything that followed.

2024 — 2025

The search for answers

The founders delved deep into cancer biology and modern oncology therapeutics, determined to understand why this disease had been left behind.

2026

A lightbulb moment

A single realisation reshaped everything — the insight that would form the foundation of an entirely new platform.

Clinical Evidence
68%

of CUP patients are left without an actionable molecular target — stranded by the current paradigm

Source: CUPISCO trial (Lancet, 2024)

Unmet Medical Need
The Challenge

Why has CUP been left behind?

01

Defined by exclusion

CUP is what remains after you've failed to identify a primary — creating a heterogeneous population that doesn't fit conventional drug development models.

02

Diagnosis over therapy

The prevailing approach tried to solve CUP through better diagnosis. This consumed the field's intellectual energy and left therapeutic innovation neglected.

03

Fragmented population

While CUP represents ~15,000 new UK cases annually, it fragments across presentation types, histologies, and metastatic sites — each subset too small for conventional pharma investment alone.

04

Rapid deterioration

Median survival of 6–9 months under current treatment. Patients deteriorate quickly, creating immense clinical trial challenges and limiting time to demonstrate benefit.

A New Direction
We are not trying to work out where the cancer came from. We are building a platform that doesn't need to know.

Molecular profiling promised a bespoke precision medicine approach for every patient. For the majority of CUP patients, that promise was never kept. The dogma of oncology drug development needed a bold new direction — a different question, and a different answer.

The Phantom Platform was forged
Competitive Landscape
Why Us

Genuine white space

In most oncology indications, a startup faces entrenched competition from multiple large pharmaceutical programmes.

In CUP therapeutics, there is essentially no competition at the company level. No one is building a platform specifically designed to treat the unfavourable CUP population that lacks actionable molecular targets.

The field has been waiting for a new mechanistic hypothesis — one that works regardless of the occult primary. Phantom provides it.

Companies with active therapeutic programmes
Breast cancer
100+
Lung cancer
90+
Colorectal cancer
70+
Melanoma
50+
Pancreatic cancer
30+
CUP therapeutics
0

The patients the paradigm
left behind deserve better

We're building Phantom Therapeutics to change the outlook for CUP patients worldwide.

Get in Touch