Today bit.bio announced the first close of its $ 103 million Series B financing.
New and existing institutional and strategic investors in the Series B round include Arch Ventures, Charles River Laboratories, Foresite Capital, National Resilience, Inc. (Resilience), Metaplanet, Puhua Capital and Tencent.
The funding will accelerate the clinical development of the company’s proprietary cell coding technology, opti-ox – a breakthrough genetic engineering approach that enables unlimited batches of any human cell to be produced at a constant scale through direct reprogramming of stem cells.
It will also support the continued growth of the company’s ioCells product portfolio, which uses opti-ox to create human cell products that are unique in that they offer true-to-scale consistency and the cells are highly defined. Access to ioCells enables our partners and customers to conduct translational research and drug development with physiologically relevant human cell models. Using human cells to bridge the translational gap in drug development will improve the chances of clinical success and the potential for a new generation of drugs.
bit.bio has already launched two products for research and drug discovery – glutamatergic neurons and skeletal myocytes – and other disease models and other cell types are to follow.
I am pleased that bit.bio is supported by world-class investors and strategic partners. The capital will allow us to accelerate our clinical and commercial scale-up and deliver cell therapies to every patient, everywhere. “
Mark Kotter, CEO and Founder, bit.bio
