Core Biogenesis, an emerging biotechnology company with a novel plant-based bioproduction platform, recently completed a $10.5M Series A funding round. The funds will be used to build out an industrial-scale facility dedicated to producing growth factors and cytokines for the burgeoning cell therapy market and cellular agriculture industry, and to hire additional scientific and technical staff to support the expansion. The funding round was led by XAnge, a Paris-based science and technology venture capital firm. Other investors include Blue Horizon Ventures, a Zurich-based venture capital firm with a focus on protein alternatives and food tech, and Thia Ventures, an investor at the crossroads of biotechnology, nutrition, and health, with offices in Geneva, Luxembourg, Belgium and Singapore.

Founded in May 2020, Core Biogenesis has developed a proprietary technology to express recombinant proteins from the seeds of the Camelina sativa oilseed plant. "Our patent-pending protein expression platform is a powerful tool for producing highly bioactive compounds in a completely animal-free and antibiotic-free manner," said CEO and Co-Founder Alexandre Reeber. "We achieve high yield while eliminating the biosafety risk of endotoxin, virus, and prion contamination seen with current mammalian and microbial expression platforms. After harvest, our downstream process is a simple three-step operation that achieves incredibly high purity."

While Core Biogenesis' molecular farming platform can be used to express recombinant growth factors for everything from therapeutics to cultivated meat, their first target is to address the complexity and high costs of next-generation therapeutic modalities such as cell therapies.

"The cell therapy market is at the forefront of future oncology, neurodegenerative disease, and personalized medicine treatments, with the market expected to grow from $9.2B in 2021 to $65B by 2027. Growth factors are critical cell culture media components and are widely employed in cell therapy manufacturing. We have generated stable lines expressing growth factors and cytokines at a high yield and have demonstrated that our products de-risk the cell expansion operation. Further, our technology drives down cell therapy manufacturing costs which will help to improve patient access to these life-saving therapies," explained Reeber. "Our large-scale recombinant protein production facility in Strasbourg will be fully functional in Q1 2023 and will ultimately have the capacity to produce kilograms of GMP-grade growth factors and cytokines."

"We hope to shift the bioprocessing field's mindset about recombinant protein production," added CSO and Co-Founder Chouaib Meziadi. "Not only can we produce proteins at high yield and lower cost than traditional methods, but our entire production process is carbon-negative. At Core Biogenesis, we truly believe that what is good for the patient can also be good for the planet."

As the company builds out the new manufacturing facility, it is also growing their team of scientific and technical experts to a total of 30 employees, with plans for additional expansions in the future.

Source: Core Biogenesis