University of Pennsylvania spinout BlueWhale Bio has surfaced on a mission to smash bottlenecks in cell and gene therapy manufacturing.
The new company uncloaked Thursday with news it has raised $18 million in seed financing. The funding round was led by the ventures arm of Danaher Corporation with contributions from the likes of Novalis LifeSciences and Marshall Wace as well.
Concerned that demand for cell therapy products is outstripping supply, BlueWhale aims to develop a technology platform and product portfolio that could bring the benefits of cell therapy to more patients “faster and at lower costs,” the company said in a press release.
BlueWhale will be based in Philadelphia and led by CEO Peter Keller. The company’s scientific team is spearheaded by immunotherapy pioneers Carl June, M.D., the Richard W. Vague professor in immunotherapy at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, and James Riley, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology at Penn.
“With an increased focus on growth and adoption, cell-based therapies can become the next pillar of medicine," June said in a statement. "I am thrilled that together we are looking to develop and commercialize a new cell therapy platform to improve patient care and save lives."
BlueWhale marks the first company to emerge from the Danaher Ventures Pioneer Program, which is angling to create companies in partnership with “leading technology founders” to develop promising products and services.
It’s been a good few weeks for cell therapy manufacturing startups. Aside from BlueWhale’s debut, Cellares in late August unveiled a $255 million series C investment to complete construction of its commercial-scale cell therapy manufacturing facility in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
Just a few days after that, Bristol Myers Squibb tapped Cellares’ robotic Cell Shuttle platform to tee up automated manufacturing of a CAR-T cell therapy. Cellares is set to perform a proof-of-concept transfer process, while BMS will evaluate the automated process with comparability data.