Sheffield spin-out Silvia Bio raises £3M to speed up complex drug manufacturing
What's the deal? Silvia BioDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a University of SheffieldDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → spin-out, has raised £3 million in seed funding to help biopharmaceutical companies make complex medicines faster, more reliably, and at lower cost. Northern GritstoneDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which backs science and technology startups in the North of England, led the round.
Who else backed it? The Parkwalk Northern Universities Venture FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the UK Innovation & Science Seed FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (managed by Future Planet CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →), Wren CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and angel investors joined the round.
What's the endgame? Silvia Bio was founded by Ed Curry, Melinda Pohle, Professor Adam Brown, and Professor David James, building on more than 20 years of biomanufacturing research at the university. Its platform profiles how cells behave during manufacturing, then formulates licensable bioreactor-compatible additives to improve product yield and quality.
Why now? More than half of new biological medicines are now considered difficult to manufacture. The company says its technology pinpoints the biological bottlenecks that limit cell performance and offers precision additives to fix them.
What's the money for? The funding will move Silvia Bio from the university into dedicated laboratory space at the Innovation Centre in Sheffield, and support its growth.
"This investment will allow us to automate and scale our technology, grow our team and help more companies bring complex medicines to patients faster," said Ed Curry, chief executive and co-founder.
The signal: As drug developers push into harder-to-make biologics, tools that cut manufacturing cost and failure rates are drawing investor interest — and university spin-outs are a growing source of that technology.
Read more: insidermedia.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
