A Cambridge chemistry spinout just crossed the billion-dollar mark. A team of scientists from the University has developed a urine test that could catch lung cancer before symptoms appear. Two Cambridge professors have won one of Spain’s most prestigious science prizes for work that transformed modern medicine. And seven University researchers have just been elected Fellows of the Royal Society.
A billion-dollar battery company born in a Cambridge lab
Nyobolt began as an idea seven years ago within the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. In May, it entered a different territory entirely by securing $60 million in Series C funding at a valuation exceeding $1 billion, marking a major commercial milestone for battery research pioneered by Professor Dame Clare Grey and her research group.
Nyobolt, co-founded by Professor Grey and CEO Dr Sai Shivareddy, is no longer confined to labs.It is now being deployed globally in AI data centres, warehouse robotics and autonomous systems. Shivareddy described the target market plainly: enterprises running autonomous systems at scale cannot afford downtime, and Nyobolt’s batteries are built for that reality.
For Cambridge, what matters is the model it represents of brilliant research done at the university campus, now scaling globally while also questioning whether its benefits reach the city as well as investors.
A urine test that could catch lung cancer years early
While Nyobolt demonstrates what Cambridge science can become commercially, other University research is pointed more directly at public health, and one recent finding has attracted significant attention.
Scientists have developed a world-first urine test that works by identifying the presence of senescent cells in the lungs – so-called ‘zombie’ cells – that stop dividing but linger and release abnormal inflammatory signals that damage surrounding tissue and help create an environment that lowers the body’s ability to fight the cancer.
Professor Ljiljana Fruk, who led the Cambridge team, said she hopes to see the test working in real patients with a rollout across the NHS within the next five years – also published in Nature Aging. Lung cancer is among the hardest cancers to treat precisely because it is so often diagnosed late. A cheap, accessible test that could be used in a GP surgery represents a meaningful shift.
Seven new Royal Society Fellows and global recognition
Also this month, Cambridge received international recognition for research that has already changed the world. Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, Professor Sir David Klenerman and French biophysicist Professor Pascal Mayer have been awarded the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research for their work that transformed DNA sequencing, fundamental to modern biology.
Seven outstanding Cambridge researchers have this year been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK‘s national academy of sciences. The Royal Society president described the cohort as exemplifying the enduring value of curiosity, creativity and rigorous inquiry.
What this means for Cambridge
Cambridge’s innovation economy is, by most measures, still producing. The challenge for the city — and for the local institutions, politicians and communities is ensuring that the pipeline from lab to global market runs in both directions: that a city capable of producing world-first cancer tests and billion-dollar battery companies can also house the people who make that work possible.
To read more about these stories, visit the university website.
