Ori Biotech raises over $100 million in Series B funding to launch innovative cell and gene therapy manufacturing platform

LONDON, Jan. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ori Biotech Ltd. (Ori), a leader in cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing technology, today announces it has secured over $100 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round. The investment round was led by Novalis LifeSciences with Puhua Capital and Chimera Abu Dhabi coming in as new investors. Existing investors from Ori's $30 million Series A round in 2020, including Amadeus Capital Partners, Delin Ventures, Northpond Ventures and Octopus Ventures, have continued to support the company with additional funding.

Ori will use the funds to further expand key personnel across all functions, in order to rapidly transition through pre-commercialization to the launch of its innovative CGT manufacturing platform. The company is also launching its Lightspeed Early Access Program (LEAP), allowing select partners to gain pre-launch access to the Ori platform in 2022. The Ori platform is a proprietary, full stack manufacturing system that closes, automates, digitizes and standardizes CGT manufacturing. It will enable therapy developers, contract manufacturers and academic researchers to seamlessly transition from pre-clinical process discovery through clinical trials to commercial scale. The promise of the novel Ori platform is to fully automate CGT manufacturing to increase throughput and reproducibility, while improving quality and decreasing costs through the combination proprietary hardware, software, data and analytical tools.

"Our mission as a company is to enable widespread patient access to life saving cell and gene therapies. One of the biggest obstacles to achieving this is cell and gene therapy manufacturing processes that are too expensive, too highly variable and too low throughput. Our team is focused on the urgent need to enhance the ability of cell and gene therapy developers, CDMOs and Academic Medical Centers to deliver these therapies to as many patients as possible as quickly as possible," said Jason C. Foster, CEO, Ori Biotech.

"The significant experience and capital that our investors bring to Ori will help the company rapidly transition through the launch of our early access partnerships in 2022 to full commercialization in 2023 in order to support new and existing partners in all phases of development," added Barry Clare, Chairman of the Board.

"We view Ori Biotech as the best-in-class solution to solve many of the significant challenges now facing CGT researchers and developers. We think Ori is well positioned, and are pleased to partner with their industry leading management team," commented Paul Meister, partner at Novalis LifeSciences, who will be joining the Ori Board of Directors.

Marijn E. Dekkers, chairman of Novalis, added; "Ori Biotech is the first investment out of our new fund, Novalis LifeSciences Investments II. Ori's digital manufacturing platform will play a critical role in improving patient access to cell therapies, and opens new doors to commercial success for therapy developers."

"We look forward to working with Paul, Marijn and the team at Novalis LifeSciences whose vast experience in bio-enterprise scale-up will be invaluable as we enter the next phase of growth at Ori," added Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Farlan Veraitch.

About Ori Biotech

Ori is a London-and New Jersey-based manufacturing technology company pioneering flexible process discovery with seamless translation and scalable commercialization of cell and gene therapies. Ori has developed a proprietary, full stack manufacturing platform that closes, automates and standardizes CGT manufacturing allowing therapeutics developers to develop and bring their products to market at commercial scale. The promise of the innovative Ori platform is to fully automate CGT manufacturing to increase throughput, improve quality and decrease costs by combining proprietary hardware, software, data and analytics.

Ori was founded in 2015 by Dr. Farlan Veraitch (UCL) and has brought together a seasoned Board and management team with over 200 years of combined pharmaceutical, CGT and venture building experience including CEO Jason C. Foster (Indivior), CBO Jason Jones (Miltenyi), CDOO Kevin Gordon (Tmunity), CTO Stuart Milne (Cytiva), VP Tom Heathman (Minaris), VP David Smith (Minaris), VP Lee Unroe (Indivior), Chris Mason (AVROBIO), Paul Meister (ThermoFisher) and Annalisa Jenkins (Dimension Therapeutics) alongside expert advisers like Bruce Levine, Anthony Davies, and Robert Preti. For more information, visit oribiotech.com.

About Novalis LifeSciences

Novalis LifeSciences is a boutique investment and advisory firm for the Life Science industry that was founded in 2017 by Marijn E. Dekkers. With a team of experienced operating executives from the Life Science industry, Novalis funds and advises visionary Life Science entrepreneurs. In addition to making financial investments, Novalis provides strategic and operational advice to portfolio companies that are at a critical growth stage in their development. For more information, visit novalislifesciences.com

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