AsiaNet 89371

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 5, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

  -- Decheng Capital and Eclipse Ventures lead Series B round, bringing

     total funding to over $100 million

Cellares Corporation (

https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=3152663-1&h=1094429714&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cellares.com%2F&a=Cellares+Corporation

), a life sciences technology company that automates cell therapy

manufacturing, today announced it has secured $82 million in a Series B round,

bringing total funding to date to $100 million. The round was led by new

investor Decheng Capital and co-led by existing investor Eclipse Ventures.

Skyviews Life Science joined as a new investor, with previous investor 8VC also

participating.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1503687/Cellares_founders.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1503684/Cellares_Logo.jpg

This latest funding will accelerate development of the Cell Shuttle, Cellares'

scalable factory-in-a-box. The Cell Shuttle enables end-to-end automation of

the labor- and time-intensive process of creating highly-individualized cell

therapies, including CAR-T therapies currently used to treat blood cancers by

modifying and growing cells from the patient's own immune system to attack

cancer cells. Cellares' single platform allows pre-clinical development to

easily transfer to the clinical environment - saving years compared with

traditional manufacturing methods - and enables quick and efficient commercial

scalability.  

"There are more than 450,000 patients today who could potentially benefit from

CAR-T cell therapies, a number expected to grow into the millions in a few

years' time.(1) Less than 1% of these patients are able to get access to these

therapies, due to a lack of scalable cell manufacturing technologies," said

Fabian Gerlinghaus, co-founder and CEO of Cellares. "This latest round is

validation of the work Cellares is doing to become the automated,

high-throughput solution with the flexibility and customization necessary to

overcome the biggest obstacles in cell therapy manufacturing today."

The Cell Shuttle is a modular and automated solution comprising hardware,

software, robotics and consumables and it is capable of producing 10 patient

doses simultaneously. It is the first and only platform to achieve an order of

magnitude improvement in instrument throughput, which enables biopharmaceutical

companies to meet commercial scale patient demand. The Cell Shuttle's

automated, high throughput capabilities also lower costs by up to 75%, shorten

the time between apheresis and product delivery - known as vein-to-vein time -

and accelerate time to market by as much as 1-2 years, thanks to a

single-platform approach.

"While cell therapies for blood cancers have seen tremendous scientific

advances at a breakneck pace, the delivery of these life-saving therapies have

encountered significant bottlenecks due to manual manufacturing processes. The

Cellares Cell Shuttle is a highly anticipated solution that empowers drug

developers to scale out to meet a growing patient demand for cell therapies,"

said world-renowned cancer cell therapy pioneer Dr. Carl June, recent recipient

of the Sanford Lorraine Cross Award for his groundbreaking work in developing

CAR-T cell therapy, Cellares Advisory Board Member, and Professor in

Immunotherapy and director for the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the

University of Pennsylvania.

"With hundreds of new cell therapies already in development around the world,

the as-yet untapped potential for a robust, automated manufacturing process is

massive," said Victor E. Tong, Partner at Decheng Capital. "Cellares is leading

the way, and we at Decheng are looking forward to helping the company scale to

meet this demand."

For more information about Cellares and the Cell Shuttle, please visit

cellares.com (

https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=3152663-1&h=113175913&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cellares.com%2F&a=cellares.com

).

About Cellares

Cellares is creating the future of cell therapy manufacturing and accelerating

access to life-saving cell therapies. The company is developing a one-of-a-kind

solution to overcome the limitations associated with manufacturing cell

therapies to make them more affordable and widely available to patients in

need. With Cellares' proprietary platform—The Cell Shuttle—biopharma companies,

academic research centers and CDMOs will no longer have to compromise by either

choosing a manufacturing platform that is semi-automated but lacks workflow

flexibility, or one that provides customization but not the end-to-end

automation needed to manufacture at scale. PACT Pharma and the Fred Hutchinson

Cancer Research Center have joined Cellares' Early Access Partnership Program

to participate in user studies, inform system specifications, and provide

feedback on the Cell Shuttle to help ensure product-market fit. The company is

headquartered in South San Francisco, Calif. For more information visit

www.cellares.com.

Media contact:

cellares@consortpartners.com

Business Development contact:

BD@cellares.com

(1) Driving the next wave of innovation in CAR T-cell therapies (McKinsey (

https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=3152663-1&h=1930112745&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mckinsey.com%2Findustries%2Fpharmaceuticals-and-medical-products%2Four-insights%2Fdriving-the-next-wave-of-innovation-in-car-t-cell-therapies&a=McKinsey

) )

Source - Cellares Corporation