Portal Biotechnologies announced the closing of an oversubscribed $9 million financing round. The round was led by NFX, with participation from existing investors including IA Ventures, Pear VC, Undeterred Ventures, IKJ Capital, and TechU Ventures.
Portal is a cell engineering and drug discovery platform company building infrastructure for cell engineering across drug discovery and cell therapy. The company’s proprietary platform uses mechanoporation to enable efficient and scalable delivery of RNA, gene editors, probes, and other molecules into hard-to-transfect cells across many cell types and workflows.
Portal said the new capital will support commercial scaling of its platform, which is designed to address one of biology’s major bottlenecks: delivering complex molecules safely and efficiently into cells without compromising cell function.
The company’s expansion efforts are focused on three areas: novel drug discovery workflows, cost-effective multi-perturbation AI data generation, and next-generation cell therapies with academic and biopharma partners.
Portal has surpassed 100 customers to date, including customers and collaborators across top pharma, AI, and biology companies, as well as academic centers. Publicly highlighted organizations include Microsoft, Merck, AbbVie, Mass General Brigham, Ragon Institute, and Purdue University.
The company said researchers at Merck, AbbVie, and Purdue have presented applications of Portal’s technology across areas, including screening impermeable degraders, peptide molecules, DNA-encoded library assays, and target-engagement assays. Multiple pharma customers have also upgraded to Portal’s high-throughput Galaxy-i platform since its launch earlier this year.
Portal is also working with the Ragon Institute of Harvard, MIT, and Mass General Brigham and Microsoft on a two-year project using the platform to generate model training data and map immune responses at scale. The company said additional collaborations in multi-perturbation screens are also underway.
In cell therapy, Portal said DARPA expanded its initial $8 million contract to develop a portable, field-deployable device for rapid point-of-care cell therapy production. DARPA is now supporting commercialization through its Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative program.
Mass General Brigham also recently presented at ASGCT on the use of Portal’s platform for same-day, circRNA-based multifunctional CAR-T production.
Portal said its platform is integrated with high-throughput robotics and GMP manufacturing systems, supporting both next-generation discovery and the groundwork for future point-of-care cell therapy manufacturing.
KEY QUOTES:
“Portal is achieving what very few biotech platforms manage in their first three years: meaningful commercial revenue, technical validation from the world’s largest companies, and a genuinely game-changing vision. With an elegant, scalable engineering platform, Portal is perfectly positioned to underpin future drug discovery, TechBio, and cell therapy ecosystems. We are thrilled to lead this round and back the Portal team.”
Omri Amirav-Drory, General Partner at NFX Bio
“Portal unlocks many biology applications far beyond what has been feasible with existing technologies. We’re excited to work with frontier partners to unlock new possibilities in cell engineering, drug discovery, and AI data generation.”
Armon Sharei, Founder and CEO of Portal
