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Curi Bio Closes $10M Series A in Oversubscribed Round
With New Funding Curi Bio will Advance 3D Engineered Muscle Tissue Products for Drug Discovery
Curi Bio Inc., a leading developer of human stem cell-based platforms for drug discovery, announced today the second closing of a $10 million oversubscribed Series A financing. New investors include UTC Investment and DS Asset Management, joining current Curi Bio investor and Series A lead Dynamk Capital. The investment will be used to scale Curi’s existing business and accelerate the development of its innovative engineered tissue analysis platforms, including its Mantarray™ platform. “Curi Bio is thrilled to partner with the distinguished teams at UTC Investment, DS Asset Management, and Dynamk Capital to fuel our next stage of growth,” said Michael Cho, JD, CEO of Curi Bio. “To discover new therapies requires human-relevant disease models. Curi is working to close the gap between preclinical results and clinical outcomes, not only in small molecule discovery, but also in frontier areas like next-generation genetic medicines and cell therapies.”
With costs to develop a single new medicine now exceeding $2Bn, the need for more human-relevant disease models to improve translational efficiency in the drug development process has never been greater. Curi’s core platform – the Curi Engine™ – integrates human stem cells, tissue specific biosystems, and A.I./M.L.-enabled data analysis to accelerate the discovery and development of new therapeutics. With this three-pronged strategy — human cells, systems and data — Curi is rapidly becoming a market leader in creating high-fidelity models of human diseases for drug discovery, especially for striated muscle, including cardiac and skeletal muscle, and neuromuscular models.
“Curi Bio’s technology platforms create significant value for pharma and biotech companies by accelerating discovery timelines and increasing the chances of success for new therapies in development,” said Dr. Gustavo Mahler, Managing Partner, Dynamk Capital. “We look forward to strong growth in Curi Bio’s customer portfolio.”
Curi Bio’s core technologies and products include NanoSurface™ Plates for structural maturation, Cytostretcher™ cell-stretching instruments, and the Mantarray platform for contractility analysis. The Mantarray platform enables researchers to generate and analyze 3D engineered human muscle tissues, providing clinically relevant functional readouts, and reducing reliance on poorly predictive animal models. Curi also offers a suite of customized research services utilizing the Curi Engine, including new assay and model development and phenotypic screening. Curi Bio counts all of the top-ten global pharmaceutical companies among its clients, customers, and partners.
About Curi Bio Curi Bio’s preclinical discovery platform combines human stem cells, systems, and data to accelerate the discovery of new medicines. The Curi Engine is a seamless, bioengineered platform that integrates human iPSC-derived cell models, tissue-specific biosystems, and A.I./M.L.-enabled phenotypic screening data. Curi’s suite of human stem cell-based products and services enable scientists to build more mature and predictive human iPSC-derived tissues—with a focus on cardiac, musculoskeletal, and neuromuscular models—for the discovery, safety testing, and efficacy testing of new drugs in development. The company’s proprietary technologies are supported by over 100 publications and 19 patents. By offering drug developers an integrated preclinical platform comprising highly predictive human stem cell models to generate clinically-relevant data, Curi is closing the gap between preclinical data and human results, accelerating the discovery and development of safer, more effective medicines.
For more information, please visit www.curibio.com.