Sensible Biotechnologies Inc., an mRNA platform company, has announced a $4.2 million pre-seed round to accelerate the development of its cell-based platform for cost-effective mRNA manufacturing. The technology developed by the company aims to overcome the limitations of current mRNA manufacturing processes, ensuring scalable and cost-effective production of high-quality mRNA.
BlueYard Capital led the pre-seed round, with participation from Y Combinator, Amino Collective, Civilization Ventures, Recode Health Ventures, and ZAKA. In addition, angel investors include Florian Schuster, Jason C. Foster, and other life science executives. Sensible Biotechnologies was represented and advised on the transaction by a DLA Piper team led by Matthew F. Gorra and Brendan Kelly.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the enormous potential of mRNA technology to deliver novel mRNA-based therapies. However, the current cell-free mRNA manufacturing method known as In Vitro Transcription (IVT) is incapable of producing mRNA of sufficient quality for many of its core clinical applications.
Furthermore, IVT-produced mRNA requires the use of expensive and proprietary enzymes and does not scale to large reaction volumes. Sensible Biotechnologies’ cell-based platform will aim to provide scalable and cost-effective production of high-quality mRNA in order to expand the mRNA technology’s potential to novel modalities.
This pre-seed funding comes on the heels of Sensible’s announcement of a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks earlier this week. Sensible plans to use Ginkgo’s capabilities to accelerate the development of its mRNA platform.Sensible Biotechnologies is developing a cell-based platform for high-quality mRNA production.
Sensible’s platform eliminates major bottlenecks in the mRNA production process, allowing mRNA technology to reach its full potential for the next generation of therapeutics and vaccines. Sensible aspires to be an essential component of the global biomanufacturing infrastructure and biosecurity framework. Sensible Biotechnologies has offices in Oxford, England, and Bratislava, Slovakia.
