Cyprus can do more than support innovation from elsewhere. It can create it, retain the intellectual property and take it international

Cyprus may still be an unlikely place to build a biotechnology company, but Dr Marianna Prokopi-Demetriades, co-founder and director of Theramir, is increasingly convinced that this is precisely what gives the island something to prove.

At Theramir, that means developing precision-oncology technologies, building the manufacturing and regulatory foundations needed to move experimental therapies closer to patients, and trying to show that globally relevant biotech can emerge from a small ecosystem.

The work is slow by design. Cancer therapies cannot be rushed through validation, safety testing, manufacturing or regulation, and even strong laboratory results can take years to reach the clinic.

For Prokopi-Demetriades, that reality sits alongside a much bigger ambition. She wants Theramir to help prove that Cyprus can do more than support innovation from elsewhere. It can create it, retain the intellectual property and take it international.

From a small island to global biotech

That ambition received fresh recognition this year when Prokopi-Demetriades was named the 2026 Study UK Alumni Awards global winner for Business and Innovation, selected among 1,800 candidates from 120 countries.

For years, she said, Cyprus “was not a place people immediately associated with biotechnology”, even though its technology and innovation ecosystem has grown enormously over the past decade.

Being recognised internationally therefore felt “both like a very personal milestone and a huge surprise”, but Prokopi-Demetriades also sees it as an opportunity to put Theramir and Cyprus more firmly on the global biotech map.

She is careful, however, not to confuse recognition with progress itself. “Of course, awards do not suddenly bring deals or open doors,” she said, noting that in biotech, progress still depends on years of scientific R&D, validation, manufacturing and regulatory work.

What recognition can do is bring visibility to a field that often feels like “a long and lonely path”.

Her hope is that the award brings more confidence and excitement around biotechnology in Cyprus, inspires the next generation of scientists and helps strong science find “a real path to scale and, ultimately, reach patients”.

What Theramir is trying to do differently

The science behind Theramir starts from a simple but difficult reality. Cancer does not behave in the same way from one patient to another.

Each tumour has its own molecular profile and can evolve under treatment, Prokopi-Demetriades explained, particularly in metastatic and treatment-resistant disease, where cancer can activate several pathways in order to survive.

Theramir’s EVmiR® platform is designed around that complexity.

“We use extracellular vesicles (the body’s natural cellular messengers) to deliver microRNAs, small molecules that can regulate multiple cancer-driving pathways simultaneously,” she said.

The distinction lies in how those molecules act. “Rather than blocking one target, the aim is to interfere with networks controlling tumour growth, resistance and metastatic spread,” she explained.

The company’s lead programme targets triple-negative breast cancer, with expansion into bladder and pancreatic cancer. Because EVmiR® is a platform technology, different microRNAs can be selected for different tumour biology, creating what Prokopi-Demetriades described as “a potentially adaptable precision-oncology approach”.

Could a blood test help tell us what comes next?

Theramir is also developing companion biomarker tools alongside its therapeutics, bringing diagnosis and treatment closer together.

The aim, Prokopi-Demetriades said, is “to connect treatment with the biomarkers that can tell us who is most likely to benefit and how the disease is responding”.

Today, Theramir evaluates LCP-1 expression through tissue biopsy, while liquid biopsy allows the team to study circulating microRNAs and tumour-associated extracellular vesicles in blood.

The value comes from combining those sources of information. “Together, these markers could support patient selection and provide a more dynamic picture of treatment response, with future potential for real-time monitoring and earlier detection of progression, resistance or recurrence,” she explained.

When the laboratory is only the beginning

A new challenge begins when promising science has to leave the laboratory.

“A promising laboratory result is only the beginning,” Prokopi-Demetriades said, because before a therapy can reach patients, the science must be reproduced consistently, safety and efficacy confirmed preclinically and the product transferred into GMP manufacturing with strict quality control and batch-to-batch consistency.

“This is why biotech development takes years rather than months,” she said.

Medochemie’s involvement is therefore significant. As she explained, “Medochemie’s involvement is important because it brings pharmaceutical manufacturing, quality and regulatory expertise directly into this next phase.”

For Theramir, the next major milestone is to translate EVmiR® into a clinical-grade product, establish a robust GMP manufacturing process and generate the data required to support first-in-human clinical development.

The expensive patience of biotech

That timetable also changes the way a biotech company has to think about investment.

Unlike a software startup, which can launch, test and change direction in months, biotech may spend years generating evidence before conventional revenues appear.

“Biotech investors are backing scientific progress long before conventional revenues appear, so milestones look very different: reproducible data, preclinical validation, GMP manufacturing, regulatory progress and eventually clinical development,” Prokopi-Demetriades said.

Public funding, she explained, helps de-risk the early science, while private investors “mainly place trust in the founders, the vision and the potential to create something with real patient impact”.

Strategic partners such as Medochemie then add sector expertise alongside capital.

There is, however, a limit to what money can accelerate. “Money can accelerate execution, but it cannot shortcut biology, safety or regulation” is how Prokopi-Demetriades put it, adding that this patience is part of “building biotech for the greater good”.

What could Cyprus become?

The question for Cyprus is whether individual companies such as Theramir can eventually become part of something broader.

Prokopi-Demetriades said the country has “come a long way since Theramir started”, when it was only the second company approved as an innovative company locally.

Her ambitions for the sector are focused. “Competing directly with mature biotech hubs is still unrealistic, but we can build our own niche,” she said.

Instead, she sees a real opportunity in next-generation biomanufacturing, developing specialised GMP capabilities that can take innovation from the laboratory towards the clinic.

Equally important is “creating and retaining Cyprus-made intellectual property”, then scaling it internationally through strategic partnerships and licensing.

That, she believes, would allow Cyprus “not simply to host innovation, but to originate and export it”.

When the science becomes personal

Behind the science, however, there is also a more personal contradiction.

Prokopi-Demetriades has spoken openly about losing people she loves to cancer while spending years working on therapies for the disease.

“There is a painful contradiction in spending years working on cancer therapies while, at the same time, losing people you love to the disease,” she said.

That experience creates an instinct to move faster.

“It makes you want to move faster, but it also reminds you why you cannot take shortcuts,” she said, adding that patients deserve “evidence and safety, not just promising science”.

Through the slower periods, she remains focused on why Theramir began. “The long timelines can be frustrating, but I know why we started,” she explained.

Reaching the first patient with a Theramir therapy would therefore mean far more than another development milestone.

It would be, she said, “a major scientific milestone and, for me, an intensely personal one”.