Ori Biotech, a cell and gene therapy manufacturing firm, has closed a $30m (£23m) Series A financing round, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $41m.
The new funding will be used to help bring Ori’s manufacturing platform to the market.
The Ori platform is designed specifically to address the requirements of a new generation of personalised cell and gene therapies. The platform fully automates and standardises CGT manufacturing allowing for scale from pre-clinical process development to commercial-scale manufacturing.
The Series A investment was led by Northpond Ventures, a science, medical, and technology-driven venture fund, alongside Octopus Ventures, a European venture fund.
Northpond and Octopus invested alongside significant support from Ori’s existing institutional investors, Amadeus Capital Partners, Delin Ventures, and Kindred Capital.
“Closing a significant Series A round, during these uncertain times, further validates Ori’s disruptive approach to fully automating cell and gene therapy manufacturing to increase throughput, improve quality, and decrease costs,” said Jason C. Foster, CEO of Ori Biotech.
“We are excited to work with our top tier investors and development partners to bring our platform to market as fast as possible to achieve our mission of enabling patient access to life-saving cell and gene therapies.”
The London and New Jersey based company was founded in 2015 by Dr. Farlan Veraitch and Professor Chris Mason.
“This new funding will allow us to continue addressing the significant challenges of providing high throughput, high quality, and cost-effective CGT manufacturing and to bring our novel platform into the clinic as quickly as possible to support the important work of our therapeutic developer partners,” added Dr. Veraitch, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer.