CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(DWPR)–Portal Biotechnologies, Inc. (“Portal”), a cell engineering platform company, announced the successful closure of an oversubscribed $7M seed round led by IA Ventures, with participation from Pear VC, Undeterred Ventures, Page One VC, IKJ Capital, and other existing investors.
Portal is pioneering a simplified approach to intracellular delivery, designed to enhance novel cell engineering and analytical capabilities. Its initial product suite for research and clinical applications utilizes next-generation mechanical delivery technology, enabling the delivery of various types of cargo—such as impermeable small molecules, polypeptides, antibodies, RNA, and gene editing complexes—into a wide array of cells. This innovative method facilitates multiplexed cell function modification, both individually and simultaneously.
Since emerging from stealth a year ago, Portal has established collaborations with over 50 biopharma and academic partners. These partnerships span applications ranging from novel drug screening assays to engineering cell therapies with circular RNA. Portal’s customer base includes seven of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies and affiliations with prestigious organizations such as Bayer Co.Lab in Cambridge and the Roche Accelerator in Shanghai. Additionally, the company integrates its single-use cartridges with high-throughput robotics manufacturers and clinical equipment providers under the ‘Powered by Portal’ model.
“The rapid adoption of Portal’s platform has been a very exciting experience. I am deeply grateful to our investors and early adopters for their faith in us at these early stages as we build on our past experiences at MIT and SQZ to democratize access to this potentially transformative technology. As a scientist, I have loved the creativity of our partners in deploying Portal’s unique capabilities in new ways. As a former cancer patient, I can’t wait to see what novel therapeutics we may enable!” said Armon Sharei, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Portal.
To drive Portal’s commercial growth while maintaining its commitment to enabling impactful science and patient outcomes, the company recently appointed Anil Narasimha, Ph.D., as Chief Commercial Officer. Dr. Narasimha, formerly the co-founder and CEO of Mekonos, brings extensive expertise in the ex-vivo drug delivery space. Together with CEO Armon Sharei, Ph.D., and COO Alec Barclay, Portal is well-positioned to scale its partnering activities and platform development to facilitate advancements in drug discovery and cell therapy across various disease areas.
“I am extremely excited to join the Portal team,” said Dr. Narasimha. “Delivery is a huge bottleneck for a variety of different applications, and Portal has a product that can solve these issues in a simple, fast, and efficient manner.”
About Portal Biotechnologies
Portal Biotechnologies is a cell engineering platform company dedicated to advancing next-generation cell engineering and analytics for research and clinical applications. Portal’s proprietary mechanical delivery system enables the precise delivery of various cargo types to a broad range of cells, accelerating breakthroughs in RNA, gene editing, and molecular design technologies. The technology’s versatility allows it to be used as a stand-alone system or integrated into third-party platforms, offering significant potential to impact biological research and cellular therapeutics. For more information, please visit https://portal.bio/.
About IA Ventures
IA Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in software and frontier technology companies. With a hands-on approach, IA Ventures has supported over 100 companies since its inception in 2010, including Datadog, The Trade Desk, Wise, DigitalOcean, and Komodo Health.
Contacts
Portal Biotechnologies
Shirley Mao
[email protected]