Following a pivot from “research tool maker” to cell and gene therapy company, plus landing a boatload of grants, a small startup in the BioGenerator stable just brought on a new CEO to pave its way to product commercialization.
“I am thrilled to join OpenCell, as it is now poised to move from an R&D stage to a commercial business,” said new CEO Kevin Gutshall in a statement. “I believe that the POROS platform will be a disruptive technology platform in the cell and gene therapy marketplace.”
Kevin Gutshall, CEO OpenCell
Gutshall joins OpenCell Technologies from MilliporeSigma, where he served as director of life science business development. At the same time OpenCell picked up an undisclosed amount of funding from St. Louis VC’s BioGenerator and Synchrony Bio.
The Technology
Without using a virus to do so, transfection is the process of introducing purified nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) into cells with a clearly defined nucleus (most of ours, for instance) to study the function of genes. The company started in 2008 around transfection technology developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with the intention of commercializing research tools – but after hooking up with BioGenerator it pivoted to cell and gene therapy applications. The company moved to St. Louis when OpenCell co-founder and the technology’s principal investigator, John Mark Meacham, was recruited from Georgia Tech to Washington University in St. Louis
Grants, grants, grants!
Late last year the Department of Health and Human Services awarded OpenCell $298,853 in a Phase 1 SBIR grant to expand the capabilities of its POROS platform to deliver multiple payloads into a cell. This is just one of more than $3,000,000 in government grants the small company has landed.
Right now POROS uses acoustic waves to drive cells through an array of nozzles, one cell at a time, creating a force to “porate” – or punch a uniform hole in – the receiving cell. The idea is to use a low strength electric field to actively drive molecules into the receiving cells through the pores created. This latest grant is to see if OpenCell can drive more than one thing into the cells for therapeutic applications.
BioGenerator’s senior vice president Charlie Bolten joins OpenCell’s board of directors, according to a press release put out by BioGenerator parent organization BioSTL. Meanwhile, Synchrony Bio Venture Partner, Paul Olivo, M.D., Ph.D. serves as an advisor to OpenCell, managing the company’s research team. Olivo is a former BioGenerator Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
BioGenerator.org
