附近上门

San Francisco-based gene therapy biotech company has raised $55 million to advance its gene therapy manufacturing platform, which company officials and investors say could 鈥渞evolutionize the economics and accessibility of gene therapy.鈥澛�

The raise comes as many investors say gene therapy is poised to make waves in the biotech industry. The technology has made enormous strides in recent years to become a new option to help treat or cure chronic or severe illnesses, injuries and possibly even change the way we age.聽

But in many ways, its impact is still theoretical because the industry is facing a major roadblock to scaling: Manufacturing simply hasn鈥檛 kept up when it comes to viral vectors, the critical tools molecular biologists use to put genetic material into cells.

That鈥檚 where 64x Bio comes in, according to company CEO and founder .

鈥淭his is a really hard problem, because 鈥� human cells have evolved to avoid vector production or virus production,鈥� Rovner told 附近上门 News in a recent interview. 鈥淪o, any mutation to these cells that forces them to make more of this material is going to be rare and it’s very likely that we would need to test more possibilities than there are stars in the universe. 鈥� We’re inventing a new technology to solve that problem.鈥澛�

The money will help 64x Bio expand its VectorSelect platform, which the company says can help pick the best cell lines for their specific uses and build them out to be manufactured at scale.聽

The Series A round was led by , with significant participation from , , and , co-founder and former CEO of . Also participating in the oversubscribed round were , co-founder and CEO of , and existing investors , 1, and .

What sets 64x Bio apart, company founders say, is that it is building the optimized cell lines and licensing them to its customers, and is collecting and analyzing information along the way to make its VectorSelect platform smarter and more efficient with each new datapoint.聽

From an investor鈥檚 point of view, 64x Bio is not only interesting on its own, but also has the potential to help grow and increase the value of the entire gene therapy industry, , director at Northpond Ventures, told 附近上门 News.聽

鈥淚t’s not just about addressing the current gene therapy needs, which is still a limited market,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t’s about unlocking and applying gene therapies to a broad patient base that 鈥� currently we can’t even consider for gene therapies because not only are they hard to put in the hands of patients, but hard even to manufacture at this type of scale. I think (64x Bio technology) would certainly expand the market significantly.鈥澛犅犅�

Today, 64x Bio has about 13 employees, including the two founders and eight full-time workers, but it plans to hire another 50 employees in the coming year, Rovner said. The company is also actively in talks with various commercial partners to expand its reach, but Rovner demurred on the details of who those partners are.聽

鈥淭he interest from the market that we鈥檝e received was really validating that there is this massive unsolved problem in the gene therapy field,鈥� Rovner said. 鈥淲e want to be the leading supplier of highly optimized cell lines for this industry.鈥澛�

Editor鈥檚 Note: This story has been updated to reflect that 附近上门 News interviewed Adam Wieschhaus, director at聽Northpond Ventures, for this article.

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