mRNA platform company Sensible Biotechnologies has announced a $4.2 million pre-seed round to accelerate the development of its cell-based platform for cost-efficient manufacturing of high-quality mRNA. And the company’s technology aims to overcome the limitations of current mRNA manufacturing processes, ensuring scalable and cost-effective production of mRNA with high quality.
The pre-seed funding round was led by BlueYard Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Amino Collective, Civilization Ventures, Recode Health Ventures, and ZAKA. And Florian Schuster, Jason C. Foster, and other life science executives are investing as angels.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the immense potential of mRNA technology to bring novel mRNA-based therapies. But the current, cell-free mRNA manufacturing method called In Vitro Transcription (IVT) cannot provide mRNA with sufficient quality for many of its core clinical applications. And mRNA produced via IVT requires the use of expensive and proprietary enzymes and does not scale to large reaction volumes. Plus Sensible Biotechnologies’ cell-based platform will aim to provide a scalable and affordable production of high-quality mRNA to expand the potential of the mRNA technology to novel modalities.
The pre-seed funding round follows Sensible’s announcement of a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, which was announced earlier this week. And Sensible will utilize Ginkgo’s capabilities to accelerate the development of Sensible’s mRNA platform.
KEY QUOTES:
“This funding will enable us to advance the development of our cell-based mRNA manufacturing platform and to unlock the full potential of mRNA technology in life-saving therapies, while strengthening the robustness of the mRNA supply chain. We are thrilled to be backed by BlueYard Capital and its co-investors and build Sensible Biotechnologies with their support.”
— Miroslav Gasparek, the CEO and Co-Founder of Sensible Biotechnologies
“Sensible Biotechnologies is on a mission to unlock the full potential of mRNA and its clinical applications. We are excited to support Sensible’s work at the intersection of biology and technology, which has the potential to disrupt the status quo in mRNA manufacturing and create a vertically integrated mRNA platform.”
— Jason Whitmire, Co-Founder and General Partner at BlueYard Capital
