Groningen startup Protyon coordinates €1.8 million EU project for personalised lung cancer treatment

Protyon, a Groningen-based startup that emerged from the University of Groningen (RUG) and the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG), is taking the lead in coordinating the DELPHI project, a research and development programme worth €1.8 million aimed at personalised oncology. The official kick-off meeting took place on 4 December 2024, formally marking the start of the project.

The consortium consists of Protyon, the UMCG, the RUG and Health-Ecore. Funding comes from Samenwerkingsverband Noord-Nederland (SNN) via the Just Transition Fund (JTF), a European fund that supports, among other things, the economic strengthening of regions in transition. For Protyon, which was founded in 2022 and has raised €600,000 in pre-seed financing to date, DELPHI represents a significant step up in scale and collaboration.

What Protyon is building

Protyon develops predictive software for clinicians who need to make treatment decisions for individual lung cancer patients. The core of its approach lies in molecular modelling: based on a tumour profile, the software calculates which therapy is expected to be most effective for that specific patient.

The company, active in biotech and life sciences and classified as an AI and SaaS company, has its roots firmly in the academic community of Groningen. The four co-founders are Rositsa Jordanova (CEO), Josef Melcr (Chief Product & Tech Officer), Matthew Groves (Chief Scientific Officer) and Hoang Nguyen (co-founder). That combination of computational expertise and clinical background reflects the approach Protyon aims to develop further within DELPHI.

What DELPHI aims to achieve

The DELPHI project focuses specifically on lung cancer, one of the most common and deadly forms of cancer worldwide. The ambition is to better tailor treatment decisions to the individual patient through advanced molecular modelling and computational analysis, enabling clinicians to decide more quickly and on a more informed basis which therapy to deploy.

The fact that Protyon acts as coordinator in a consortium with established partners such as the UMCG and the RUG is notable for a two-year-old startup. In practice, coordination means that Protyon is responsible for steering the consortium, reporting to the funder and monitoring progress across partner boundaries.

Health-Ecore, the fourth partner, is an organisation focused on health economics and the implementation of innovations in clinical practice. The presence of this partner indicates that DELPHI is not only targeting technological development but also broader application in a clinical setting.

Funding via the Just Transition Fund

The €1.8 million comes from the Just Transition Fund, a European instrument that supports regions in their transition to a more sustainable and diversified economy. In the Netherlands, this fund is administered through the SNN, which focuses on the three northern provinces: Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe.

For the northern Netherlands region, which has historically been heavily dependent on natural gas extraction, projects of this kind offer an opportunity to anchor knowledge- and technology-intensive activities. A biotech project centred on AI-assisted oncology fits within the broader regional strategy to diversify the economic profile. Whether and to what extent DELPHI contributes to that objective cannot be quantified on the basis of available information, but the choice of this specific fund does indicate that the application was explicitly submitted in that context.

Position in the Dutch AI and biotech landscape

DELPHI illustrates a pattern that is increasingly visible in the Dutch biotech and healthtech ecosystem: startups that, early on, still in the pre-seed phase, secure large public research projects as a lever for further product development. This gives them access to clinical networks and scientific infrastructure that would otherwise be out of reach.

For investors and other founders in the region, it is relevant that a two-year-old startup with €600,000 in its own financing has nonetheless managed to take on the coordinating role in a consortium of this size. This is in part possible because the founders were already embedded in the relevant academic institutions before Protyon was established. That academic grounding lowers the barrier for this type of public-private collaboration, but also places demands on the governance capacity of the young company.