Tenboron Oy awarded €7.6M to advance biologically targeted cancer radiotherapy
Tenboron Oy (Finland) was awarded funding from Horizon Europe’s 2025 Health Call, ‘Boosting the translation of biotech research into innovative health therapies’. With an overall budget of €7.6 million, the project, BIOTARGET0010, will advance the clinical development of Tenboron’s lead candidate, TB0010, a first-in-class biologically targeted radiotherapy for EGFR-positive recurrent or unresectable head and neck carcinoma. The project kicked off on 16 June 2026 and runs until November 2030.
Pictured: Tenboron Oy CEO, Juha Jouhki.
We heard from Juha Jouhki, CEO of Tenboron, about what the funding means for the company, the importance of their project, and the role of Catalyze in supporting the successful proposal.
Tenboron is addressing a critical treatment gap
Head and neck cancer remains one of the most difficult cancer areas to treat, with around 1.5 million new cases and half a million deaths worldwide each year. For patients with recurrent or unresectable disease, treatment options are limited, often severe, and rarely curative. Given the location of these tumours and their impact on essential functions such as swallowing, speaking and breathing, there is a strong need for more precise approaches that can improve tumour control while limiting harm to healthy tissue.
BIOTARGET0010 builds on the potential of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy, or BNCT, a targeted radiotherapy approach in which a boron-containing compound is delivered to tumour cells and then activated by low-energy neutrons, triggering a short-range reaction that kills cancer cells from within.
Although BNCT has shown promise, its wider clinical impact has been limited by existing boron carriers, which do not always deliver enough boron specifically to tumour cells. Tenboron’s TB0010 is designed to overcome this bottleneck by combining a clinically validated tumour-targeting antibody with a boron-rich carrier, enabling more precise delivery to EGFR-positive cancer cells.
For Tenboron, the Horizon Europe funding comes at an important moment.
“Today, BNCT is still a marginal cancer treatment modality, and boron carriers have limited markets,” says Jouhki. “This makes fundraising extra challenging, in spite of the excellent treatment outcomes even with the old suboptimal carriers. We were fortunate that the expert evaluators appointed by the European Commission saw the opportunity and the big picture.”
Moving towards clinical proof of concept
BIOTARGET0010 will advance TB0010 from technology readiness level (TRL) 5 to TRL 7 through Phase 1b/2 clinical validation, evaluating safety and preliminary efficacy in EGFR-positive recurrent or unresectable head and neck carcinoma. Building on robust preclinical evidence and an ongoing first-in-human trial, BIOTARGET0010 will generate the clinical proof of concept needed to bring TB0010 closer to patients.
“This funding is a real game changer for us, as it enables us to conduct the most critical studies to produce clinical proof of concept,” Jouhki explains. “Clinical validation will make our future fundraising from private sources significantly easier.”
A multidisciplinary consortium
The complexity of BNCT makes collaboration essential. Within BIOTARGET0010, Tenboron leads the development of TB0010. Completing the consortium are the University of Granada and The Swallows Head & Neck Cancer Charity.
“BNCT is a multidisciplinary treatment modality, combining medicine, physics, chemistry and biology,” says Jouhki, “The University of Granada brings a wealth of experience in physics of BNCT.”
Alongside, The Swallows Head & Neck Cancer Charity brings the patient perspective into the project.
“Cancer treatments have a reputation of being harsh and invasive, often worsening the patients’ quality of life even when successful,” Jouhki adds. “The Swallows Head & Neck Cancer Charity brings the patient viewpoint into the planning of the studies and outcome metrics, as well as communication with the general public.”
Tenboron on working with Catalyze
Catalyze supported Tenboron in developing and writing the successful Horizon Europe submission, building on an existing collaboration with the company.
“Our collaboration started from optimising our pitch deck and then moved on to preparing an EIC Accelerator application,” Jouhki explains. “We worked with the same team on the Horizon Europe TOOL-05 application, which made things a lot easier, as the consultants already had a good idea of the project.”
For Jouhki, Catalyze’s understanding of the Horizon Europe assessment criteria and proposal requirements was critical.
“Their knowledge of the application structure and requirements, as well as what the evaluators do and do not like to see, was invaluable. Quite honestly, we would not have been able to do it alone.”
With BIOTARGET0010 now underway, Tenboron and its partners are taking an important step towards bringing biologically targeted radiotherapy closer to patients with limited treatment options.
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