Sarcura raises a 2.5 m€ seed round

Sarcura GmbH, an Austrian early stage technology start-up, announces the completion of an oversubscribed seed round from a European group of venture capital investors, including IST cubeNina Capital and Axilium Capital, in addition to an AWS Seed financing grant.

Nov. 20210/ Company
Daniela Buchmayr

 

Founded in 2019 by a visionary, interdisciplinary team, Sarcura combines microfluidics and silicon chip technology in order to transform industrial manufacturing of personalized cell therapies. The company’s office and laboratory is located at IST PARK, the technology park adjacent to the campus of IST Austria.

Daniela Buchmayr, co-founder and CEO of Sarcura says “cell and gene therapies will revolutionize cancer treatment, though the manufacturing of personalized cell therapies remains a major bottleneck for the industry and leads to very high costs. Sarcura brings processing and real time control to the cellular level in order to fully automate the manufacturing of these highly potent, living medicines. We joined forces with a world-leading research centre in the field of nanoelectronics to devise novel, innovative approaches and develop the urgently needed technology for the production of affordable high-quality cell therapies.”

Florian Resch, Partner at IST cube, comments: “Sarcura combines an interdisciplinary founders team of accomplished scientists and experienced managers with a research-derived, innovative product for a growing market with a strong need. With this profile, the company fits perfectly into our investment scope of early-stage, science-based start-ups and spin-offs. The team addresses a clear pain point in the market and convinced us with their customer-centric, and technology savvy approach. We are happy to lead this investment round and are looking forward to the next steps together with the founders and fellow investors.”

Marta-Gaia Zanchi, Ph.D, Partner at Nina Capital, remarks: “Sarcura addresses the infrastructural need of a growing therapy market to reduce the costs and time of manufacturing cell therapies, in order to bring their life-saving potential to more cancer patients. By applying semiconductor technology embedded in microfluidic processing systems, Sarcura will bring real-time bioprocess control to the cellular level, finally enabling the transformation from industrial biotechnology to personalised medicine.”

“This new funding will allow us to continue the development of our first product, a GMP device for controlled cell isolation with integrated real time process and quality control”

Daniela Buchmayr, co-founder and CEO of Sarcura

Sarcura GmbH is an early stage technology company, developing an instrument platform for the GMP manufacturing of autologous cell therapies. Our platform combines microfluidic processing with silicon chip technology to enable real time process control and manipulation on a cellular level supporting a fully automated manufacturing system.

Nina Capital is a European venture capital firm focused on early stage investments in health technology companies. We invest in need-driven founders inspired by a vision for the future in which data, computing, IoT and deep technologies deliver meaningful outcomes and insight for improving health and the provision of care. More on us at www.nina.capital.

 IST cube is a seed fund focusing on deep-tech and science-based start-ups and spin-offs. The fund leads investment rounds in pre-seed and seed stages with the ability for follow-on investments. IST cube supports the portfolio companies with equity, know-how and network. In addition, the fund has a strong partner in the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, which provides access to scientific infrastructure. www.ist-cube.com

 Axilium is a Swedish based Investment company focusing on early-stage Life Science and Technology companies with a strong team and a high degree of innovation. Axilium focuses on the Scandinavian market, however the investment team can invest globally if the right opportunity presents itself. www.axiliumholding.com