Univercells, a bioprocessing provider focused on increasing the availability of affordable biologics to address global health challenges, has announced up to €50 million ($54.09m) financing from new investment platform Gamma Biosciences.
The investment will be deployed in a newly created subsidiary of Univercells focused on accelerating the industrialisation and commercialisation of Univercells’ manufacturing technologies, including the NevoLine biomanufacturing platform and the scale-X bioreactor portfolio.
With the new financing, Univercells will focus on scaling the NevoLine platform and the scale-X portfolio with a comprehensive approach to streamline production, fund innovation, enable new product and application development and drive commercial acceleration.
Specifically, the investment is intended to support continued expansion into the fast-growing gene therapy segment, including new developments that will enable a range of best-in-class solutions for viral manufacturing.
Hugues Bultot, CEO of Univercells, said: “This investment builds on existing grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Health Investment Fund and European Investment Bank and secures our ability to create value for the market with speed, efficacy and reliability.”
Both the scale-X bioreactor portfolio and the NevoLine biomanufacturing platform have been designed and commercially validated to dramatically reduce the footprint, capital and operational expenditures required to produce a variety of biologic and viral products.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2020. Once the transaction is complete, Univercells’ remaining business will concentrate on developing a portfolio of vaccines and biosimilars to be delivered at an affordable price and establishing its services offering.
