VitriCell, a Belgium-based cell preservation technique developer spun out from University of Liège, has closed a €1m ($1.2m) series A round featuring two vehicles backed by the university.
The round included $872,000 in equity provided by Spinventure, University of Liège’s seed fund, and Gesval, the institution’s tech transfer arm. Individual investors included Jean-Pierre Delwart and affiliates of the Be Angels syndicate.
The remaining tranche of approximately $367,000 was made up of loans and grants from the regional government of Wallonia and Belgium-based life sciences incubator WBC. VitriCell previously raised $122,000 in capital when it was spun out in June 2017.
VitriCell is working on an approach to cryopreservation – the storage of organisms such as stem cells at very low temperatures for research purposes without damaging the specimens.
The spinouts technique, aseptic vitrification in chemically defined media, makes it possible to vitrify entire cultured cells rather than requiring individual treatment.
Vitrification solidifies cells without creating ice crystals, and the spinout believes its variation of the technique will optimise storage of most cell types used in biological research.
The cash will be used to launch the first aseptic vitrification-based products and to fund product research and development. The spinout is set to release a product in February 2018 that could vitrify cellular embryos within 60 seconds.
Annick Houbrechts, a life sciences tech transfer officer at University of Liège, will join VitriCell’s board alongside Françoise Leblanc, an investment manager at Spinventure, Joseph de Gheldere, president of Be Angels, and Marc-Henri Decrop, a partner at CommonGround Corporate Finance.
Eric Halioua, president and chief executive of immuno-oncology developer PDC Line Pharma, will act as chairman.
VitriCell was co-founded by Luc Grobet, who leads the embryology unit of Liège’s Faculty of Veterinary medicine, and Fabien Ectors, who leads a team in Liège’s biotech research and commercialisation hub Giga.
Grobet and Ectors were joined by Delphine Connan, chief executive of VitriCell, who had previously been with Liège first as a research fellow and then as a scientific researcher.