Cell engineering platform company Portal Biotechnologies announced an oversubscribed $7 million seed round led by IA Ventures with participation from Pear VC, Undeterred Ventures, Page One VC, IKJ Capital, and other current investors.
Portal is implementing a simplified approach to intracellular delivery, focused on enabling novel cell engineering and analytical capabilities. The product suite for research and clinical scales is based on next-generation mechanical delivery technology capable of delivering many different types of cargo into a broad range of cells.
This approach has been shown to enable delivery of various molecules into cells, including impermeable small molecules, polypeptides, antibodies, RNA and gene editing complexes, both individually and simultaneously, for multiplexed cell function modification.
Since emerging from stealth a year ago, Portal accumulated over 50 biopharma and academic partners leveraging the platform for applications ranging from novel drug screening assays to engineering cell therapies with circular RNA. Portal’s customer base includes 7 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, is a member of the Bayer Co.Lab in Cambridge, and is affiliated with the Roche Accelerator in Shanghai. Under the ‘Powered by Portal’ model, the company also integrates its single-use cartridges with high throughput robotics manufacturers and clinical equipment providers.
To accelerate Portal’s commercial activities while committing to enabling novel science and patient impact, Anil Narasimha, Ph.D., joined as Chief Commercial Officer. Dr. Narasimha was most recently a co-founder and CEO of Mekonos, where he gained a deep understanding of the ex-vivo drug delivery space. And paired with Portal’s CEO, Armon Sharei, Ph.D, and COO, Alec Barclay, the company is well positioned to continue scaling its partnering activities and platform development to enable novel drug discovery and cell therapy capabilities across disease areas.
KEY QUOTES:
“The rapid adoption of Portal’s platform has been a very exciting experience. I am deeply grateful to our investors and early adopters for their faith in us at these early stages as we build on our past experiences at MIT and SQZ to democratize access to this potentially transformative technology. As a scientist, I have loved the creativity of our partners in deploying Portal’s unique capabilities in new ways. As a former cancer patient, I can’t wait to see what novel therapeutics we may enable!”
– Armon Sharei, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Portal
“I am extremely excited to join the Portal team. Delivery is a huge bottleneck for a variety of different applications, and Portal has a product that can solve these issues in a simple, fast, and efficient manner.”
– Anil Narasimha
