CellFE is a QB3 Startup in a Box company. From Endpoints News.
The California-based startup CellFE has raised a $22 million Series A to advance a new approach to making cell therapies with microfluidics.
Most cell therapy developers use hollowed-out viruses to deliver the genetic edits that make cell therapies effective. But those viruses are expensive and difficult to manufacture and also limited in the size of what they can carry. CellFE CEO Alla Zamarayeva told Endpoints News that the company is trying a different approach by using tiny, microfluidic chips instead of viruses to modify cells.
“There is a consensus between industry leaders that the industry will move towards non-viral cell engineering technologies, and CellFE is one of them,” Zamarayeva said.
CellFE’s device uses a credit card-sized consumable with a microfluidic chip. Cells are placed on that chip, which is then inserted into its benchtop-size device. Zamarayeva said those cells act like sponges absorbing water, recovering volume by pulling in the fluids around them. Desired genetic interventions, such as CRISPR-Cas9, are placed in the surrounding fluid that those cells take up. Zamarayeva said the process is efficient and will take only one minute to engineer a patient’s cells.
“We have built CellFE to be the backbone of next-generation cell therapies,” Zamarayeva said. “Our technology enables pharmaceutical companies to manufacture cell therapies with significantly shorter vein-to-vein time and significantly lower cost.”
The startup, which has about 20 employees, has already been testing a smaller-scale version of its device with pharma partners and plans to make a clinical-scale version “available to test around mid-next year” for partnering drug companies, Zamarayeva said. She declined to discuss the company’s revenues.
CellFE’s origin story goes back to 2017 when Zamarayeva read a research paper from Georgia Tech scientists on a new idea in microfluidics. Near year’s end, she flew to Georgia to pitch the inventors on starting a company. Zamarayeva, who grew up in Ukraine and studied engineering at the City College of New York, was still earning her PhD in engineering at the University of California, Berkeley at the time.
CellFE started operating in 2019, just as Zamarayeva finished her PhD. The company raised a $3.6 million seed round in January 2020. This most recent Series A round was led by M Ventures, the corporate VC arm of Merck KGaA, based in Darmstadt, Germany. Other backers include Khosla Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, Riverine Ventures, Cota Capital and Dynamk Capital.
While CellFE is preparing to launch its GMP-grade device next year, Zamarayeva said her long-term vision for cell therapy is a one- or two-day manufacturing process that makes therapies cheaper and more widely available.
“They can be manufactured and administered similar to what is done with dialysis today,” she said.