Ori Biotech raises over $100 million in Series B funding
Innovative cell and gene therapy manufacturing platform
Ori Biotech Ltd. (Ori), a start-up in cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing technology, announced it has secured over $100 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round. The investment round was led by Novalis LifeSciences with Puhua Capital and Chimera Abu Dhabi coming in as new investors. Existing investors from Ori's $30 million Series A round in 2020, including Amadeus Capital Partners, Delin Ventures, Northpond Ventures and Octopus Ventures, have continued to support the company with additional funding.
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Ori will use the funds to further expand key personnel across all functions, in order to rapidly transition through pre-commercialization to the launch of its innovative CGT manufacturing platform. The company is also launching its Lightspeed Early Access Program (LEAP), allowing select partners to gain pre-launch access to the Ori platform in 2022. The Ori platform is a proprietary, full stack manufacturing system that closes, automates, digitizes and standardizes CGT manufacturing. It will enable therapy developers, contract manufacturers and academic researchers to seamlessly transition from pre-clinical process discovery through clinical trials to commercial scale. The promise of the novel Ori platform is to fully automate CGT manufacturing to increase throughput and reproducibility, while improving quality and decreasing costs through the combination proprietary hardware, software, data and analytical tools.
"Our mission as a company is to enable widespread patient access to life saving cell and gene therapies. One of the biggest obstacles to achieving this is cell and gene therapy manufacturing processes that are too expensive, too highly variable and too low throughput. Our team is focused on the urgent need to enhance the ability of cell and gene therapy developers, CDMOs and Academic Medical Centers to deliver these therapies to as many patients as possible as quickly as possible," said Jason C. Foster, CEO, Ori Biotech.
"The significant experience and capital that our investors bring to Ori will help the company rapidly transition through the launch of our early access partnerships in 2022 to full commercialization in 2023 in order to support new and existing partners in all phases of development," added Barry Clare, Chairman of the Board.
"We view Ori Biotech as the best-in-class solution to solve many of the significant challenges now facing CGT researchers and developers. We think Ori is well positioned, and are pleased to partner with their industry leading management team," commented Paul Meister, partner at Novalis LifeSciences, who will be joining the Ori Board of Directors.
Marijn E. Dekkers, chairman of Novalis, added; "Ori Biotech is the first investment out of our new fund, Novalis LifeSciences Investments II. Ori's digital manufacturing platform will play a critical role in improving patient access to cell therapies, and opens new doors to commercial success for therapy developers."
"We look forward to working with Paul, Marijn and the team at Novalis LifeSciences whose vast experience in bio-enterprise scale-up will be invaluable as we enter the next phase of growth at Ori," added Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Farlan Veraitch.
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Topic world Gene therapy
Genetic diseases once considered untreatable are now at the center of innovative therapeutic approaches. Research and development of gene therapies in biotech and pharma aim to directly correct or replace defective or missing genes to combat disease at the molecular level. This revolutionary approach promises not only to treat symptoms, but to eliminate the cause of the disease itself.
