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A minefield of opportunity for this biotech startup
We've seen RemePhy before, but what have they been up to since?
Martin SFP Bryant
March 13, 2025
You probably already know that we like to get in early with interesting startups here at PreSeed Now.
Sometimes we get in so early that it’s worth checking in with them again when they’re still at an early stage, but a bit further on.
There was a lot of interest in our profile of a team working on bioengineering for the mining industry last January. So we’re back with them today. How have things progressed? Find out below…
As you’ll see, because this is a catch-up piece, the format is a little different to our usual editions.
But first:
Derry-based cancer tech startup StimOxyGen, a spinout from Ulster University focused on making stubborn tumours more treatable, has raised a £1.5 million round, led by DSW Ventures.
– Martin
Getting out of the greenhouse is a promising minefield for RemePhy
RemePhy co-founders Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou
In summary:
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When people ask me about the kinds of startups we cover on PreSeed Now, RemePhy is one I often bring up as an example.
Their ‘biotech for the mining industry’ offering generated a lot of interest when we covered it 14 months ago. But that was at a very early stage for co-founders Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou.
Back then, their startup was called PhytoMines, and it was barely even a startup. The pair were preparing to use Keck’s PhD research to help the mining industry clear disused sites of metals left in the soil.
As we explained at the time:
Extracting metal from the ground leaves a lot of soil burdened with trace amounts of metal that can’t be mined via traditional methods, and can render land unusable for other purposes, or cause pollution that makes agriculture difficult.
That’s why clearing heavy metal pollution from soil around mines is important, through a process called remediation. But while techniques like acid leaching can remove heavy metals from soil, they have environmental impacts of their own.
PhytoMines is a new startup that thinks it has a solution. The London-based team wants to use plants to both clean up pollution and extract metal from the soil so that it can be used in industry. But unlike others in this space, they’re bioengineering enhanced plants specifically for the task.
“We take strains of bacteria that are engineered to exhibit certain genes, and then we take plant seeds and introduce the bacteria into the plant seed,” explains co-founder and CEO Franklin Keck.
“Then we go out to a field and we plant the seeds and let them grow naturally for three months. Then we harvest them and take them away and use a patented process to extract the heavy metals from the biomass and then both can be recycled back into industry.”
Aside from formally spinning out of Imperial College London and rebranding the company as RemePhy, Keck and Ioannou have teamed up with Cambridge Future Tech (CFT) to bolster their capabilities at this early stage.
“Because both me and Franklin have a research background, we were looking for a third co-founder with more business, admin, finance, and marketing experience. We met lots of individuals, mainly from the Y Combinator app. And then Cambridge Future Tech approached us for the first time during the Conception X demo day,” Ioannou explains.
He adds that the partnership, which sees CFT as essentially a third co-founder, has been useful for handling business and legal issues, while CFT’s in-house designers were useful for the rebrand to RemePhy.
“It’s a team of 15 to 20 people that you can reach out to and get help on any matter that you want related to the business. But at the same time, they want you to have the lead, which I guess it is another important trait for co-founders, and especially for young founders like us,” Ioannou adds.
Expanding beyond the lab
RemePhy has been having deeper discussions with mining companies about the technical considerations around commercial deployment of their plants. CFT’s partnership with mining giant Anglo American will have helped here no doubt, but the conversations have been wider across the industry, Ioannou says.
“In some territories, even before you begin to mine a piece of land, by applying to start operations you also have to submit a plan on how it is going to end. In 50 years, for example, how you're going to deliver back the land, how you're going to close the mine site and rehabilitate it,” Ioannou explains.
He adds that even where regulations aren’t this strict, mining companies have a desire to appear considerate to the environment.
Environmental consultants and land developers have been other lines of research for RemePhy.
“Our main target is rehabilitation and management of legacy sites - closed mines that are under-developed because they're polluted and you can't really do much with them,” Ioannou says.
“Even if the UK doesn't have huge mining companies operating right now, there are thousands of legacy sites, especially in Cornwall and Wales, for example.
“There are lots of legacy sites from the previous century, and you can't really adopt intensive, mechanical approaches for remediation, because lots of these sites are fragile or they have to be conserved for historical reasons. But at the same time, if you want to do something with them, you also have to manage the pollution.”
Ioannou says the startup is working on a collaboration with a mining environmental management company and an environmental consultancy, and the mining companies that make up their customer base.
This partnership will see RemePhy perform pilot studies with soil samples from mines.
“The samples are going to be shipped to us and we're going to process them in the lab in order to validate and develop our prototype. And hopefully this is going to lead to field trials and deployment of the technology,” Ioannou adds.
Field trials will be dependent on a successful application to the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
“Our main goal is to reach TRL 6 in the next two years,” Ioannou says.
Ioannou and Keck believe the timing is right for what they’re working on, with various initiatives from governments around the world focusing on the field of phytomining, even if the startup is more focused on the remediation use case at the end of a mine’s life than using its plants as a mining tool themselves.
Back next week
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