NEW YORK – UK mRNA manufacturing company Sensible Biotechnologies said on Thursday that it has raised $4.2 million in a pre-seed financing round.
The round was led by BlueYard Capital, with contributions from Y Combinator, Amino Collective, Civilization Ventures, Recode Health Ventures, and Zaka. In addition, Florian Schuster, Jason C. Foster, and other life science executives participated as angel investors.
The pre-seed funding follows Sensible's announcement of a strategic partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks earlier this week, under which Sensible will utilize Ginkgo's capabilities to accelerate the development of its mRNA platform.
Based in Oxford and Bratislava, Slovakia, Sensible said it is developing a "cell-based platform for cost-efficient and scalable manufacturing of high-quality mRNA." With the money raised, the firm plans to optimize and scale its mRNA manufacturing platform and mRNA design capabilities.
"This funding will enable us to advance the development of our cell-based mRNA manufacturing platform and to unlock the full potential of mRNA technology in life-saving therapies, while strengthening the robustness of the mRNA supply chain," Sensible CEO and Cofounder Miroslav Gasparek said in a statement.
Sensible and Ginkgo said they will work on a method to produce more mRNA than in vitro transcription, with longer lengths and for novel therapeutic modalities. As part of the collaboration, Ginkgo will help optimize Sensible's microbial mRNA production platform. Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.