Mission Bio, Inc., has raised $70 million in its Series C financing led by Novo Growth, the growth equity arm of Novo Holdings. Soleus Capital also joins the round, along with earlier investors Mayfield, Cota, and Agilent, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $120 million. To support Mission Bio’s rapid growth, the funds will scale its single-cell multi-omics technology, the Tapestri Platform, to expand the company’s reach in more effective clinical trials for novel cancer treatments, as well as characterization for cell and gene therapy.
Spun out of research at the University of California, San Francisco, Mission Bio is headquartered in South San Francisco, California.
Over the past year, Mission Bio has advanced its efforts to support drug development through clinical trials and the translation of research into novel biomarkers with its growing install base in NCI cancer centers and key biopharma companies. The Tapestri Platform is the first-ever single-cell multi-omics platform capable of detecting DNA and protein changes simultaneously from the same cell — a capability necessary for the development of more impactful precision therapies.
The technology has been adopted by Agios, LabCorp, Onconova Therapeutics, and other companies to optimize clinical trials and improve the likelihood of success. Leading cancer centers, including Stanford, MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of California at San Francisco, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, have leveraged the Tapestri Platform to support their work in therapeutic resistance and treatment response monitoring.
“We are on a mission to help our customers eliminate cancer. With access to multiple layers of the cellular profile, the Tapestri Platform can help identify novel biomarkers in diseased cells, monitor therapy resistance and response, and accelerate novel therapies through clinical trials,” said Charlie Silver, CEO, and Co-founder of Mission Bio. “We are delighted to partner with Novo Holdings to advance our impact in drug development and cell and gene therapy.”
As part of this announcement, Robert Ghenchev, Senior Partner and Head of Novo Growth, has joined Mission Bio’s board of directors. “In Novo Growth, our strategy is to support companies developing cutting edge science that has significant potential to positively impact patients and society. Single-cell analysis has proven highly valuable in cancer research, and we are confident the technology will be used increasingly to unlock key insights into blood cancers, as well as solid tumor indications.”
Novo Holdings A/S is a private limited liability company wholly owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. It is the holding company of the Novo Group, comprising Novo Nordisk A/S and Novozymes A/S, and is responsible for managing the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s assets.
