Cellular Origins, a TTP company that enables the manufacturing of cell therapies at scale, has announced the completion of a $40 million over-subscribed Series A round.
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The Series A financing was led by Johnson & Johnson, through its corporate venture capital organisation, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., and the syndicate comprises Highland Europe, BGF, NYBC Ventures, and TTP Group. Together, these investors have a proven track record across life sciences, manufacturing automation and scaling global businesses.
Cell therapies are transforming medicine. However, their manufacture requires too much labour meaning the industry has failed to get them to all the patients who could benefit. Cellular Origins removes the barrier to scale by applying its proprietary robotic automation to connect individual third party unit operations already used in cell therapy processes. The resulting Constellation platform not only preserves biological performance, but also delivers the reliable, low-risk and space-efficient pathway to scale that pharma companies need as they seek to meet increasing patient demand. Trusted by market leaders including Cytiva, Fresenius Kabi, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Wilson Wolf, Cellular Origins has become the market leader enabling the reliable manufacture of 100,000s of doses of transformative therapies.
“This fundraise is a pivotal milestone in our mission to industrialise cell therapy manufacturing,” said Edwin Stone, CEO, Cellular Origins. “The support from our investors is a strong endorsement of both our technology and the urgent need for scalable, automated solutions in this space. It recognises the progress that Cellular Origins, its partners and customers have collectively made towards enabling access to cell therapies at scale. This investment gives us access to the capital and networks to drive our next phase of growth. Through this fundraise we will accelerate the development and deployment of our robotic platform to help make life-saving cell therapies more accessible, reliable, and affordable.”
As a result of the financing, Cellular Origins will expand its commercial team to deliver on the increasing demand for its solution from those pharma companies with commercial and late-stage therapies. The funds will also enable Cellular Origins to broaden the range of unit operations integrated into its platform, giving cell therapy developers confidence that the unit operations they use will be capable of manufacturing at scale without any compromise to biological performance. Finally, the investment enables Cellular Origins to build the systems and infrastructure needed for full manufacturing and services scale up and to create the robust global operation ready to meet large scale demand. Looking ahead, Cellular Origins will extend its capabilities beyond cell therapies into the wider Advanced Therapies Medicinal Products (ATMP) sector, where common challenges in scaling the manufacture of these scientific advances mirror those seen in cell therapies.