CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Emulate, Inc. today announced that it has secured $28 million of its Series B financing that will accelerate translation of its Organs-on-Chips technology into a commercially available ‘Human Emulation System’. The lab-ready automated system – which includes Organ-Chips, instrumentation and software apps – enables researchers and product development teams to work with a human-relevant system in their existing R&D workflows. The Organs-on-Chips technology offers the potential for greater precision and control than today’s cell-culture or animal-based experimental methods.
The Series B funding will position Emulate to accelerate its R&D effort, expedite the launch of its products and expand strategic relationships with industry and academic partners in order to evolve the company towards profitability. The financing includes a diverse syndicate of investors selected from the innovative life sciences and technology investment communities, including existing investors Hansjörg Wyss, NanoDimension and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as well as new investors: OS Fund; Atel Ventures; ALS Finding a Cure, a program of the Leandro P. Rizzuto Foundation; and a fourth new unnamed investor.
Proceeds of the financing will be used to advance Emulate’s product design and development across a range of activities, including:
- Launch of the Human Emulation System as an automated product suite that includes Organ-Chips, instrumentation hardware, and software applications – the plug-and-play system will allow end users to easily conduct experiments within their own labs, without requiring specialized expertise. The system also allows higher throughput, customizable and human-relevant studies.
- Expansion of the Organ-Chip portfolio to extend beyond the lung, liver, intestine, and skin for additional organs such as kidney, heart, and brain.
- Acceleration of disease-state applications for Organ-Chips, to gain further understanding of mechanisms of diseases in key areas of focus for industry – including neurodegenerative diseases, oncology, intestinal diseases and the microbiome, and infectious diseases.
“This financing positions Emulate to advance our Organs-on-Chips to the next stage of commercial development, so that our technology can operate as a plug-and-play system in the hands of product development teams at pharmaceutical, chemical, food, and consumer products companies,” said James Coon, Chief Executive Officer of Emulate. “Based on our active R&D collaborations with industry and academic leaders, we recognize the broad potential for our Human Emulation System to help accelerate development cycles and improve products, as well as opening up new opportunities for disease understanding and personal health applications. With this financing – and the support of a group of such high-quality investors who share our vision – we are commercializing our system and products to pursue a wide range of applications for the Organs-on-Chips technology, to enable positive impact throughout many industries.”
Emulate’s proprietary Organs-on-Chips technology is designed to achieve a new industry standard by predicting human responses to medicines, chemicals and diseases with an innovative approach that aims to result in improved speed, accuracy and fidelity than existing cell culture and animal models. In establishing new applications and benchmarks for using the Organs-on-Chips technology within existing commercial workflows, Emulate has already formed and continues to expand R&D collaboration programs with industry, academia, clinical and government partners.
“We have already seen exciting new discoveries and insights from using Organs-on-Chips as a new way to evaluate human response, and to better understand biology and disease – leading to new and improved development of products that impact people’s lives,” said Geraldine A. Hamilton, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer of Emulate. “As we launch our automated Human Emulation System, it will empower a host of researchers at locations throughout the world to advance new research findings and innovative product development. In addition to evolving with greater accessibility as a plug-and-play system to be used by any researcher, our system is growing in functionality to include additional Organ-Chips as well as disease-state applications in core areas of Emulate’s research focus— including neurodegenerative diseases, oncology and the microbiome.”
About the Human Emulation System powered by Organs-on-Chips technology
Based on the Organs-on-Chips technology, Emulate has created a new living Human Emulation System that provides a real-time window into the inner workings of human biology and disease – offering researchers a new technology designed to predict human response with greater precision and detail than today’s cell culture or animal-based testing. Each of Emulate’s proprietary Organ-Chips – such as the lung, liver, brain or kidney – contains tiny hollow channels lined with tens of thousands of living human cells and tissues, and is approximately the size of an AA battery. An Organ-Chip is a living, micro-engineered environment that recreates the natural physiology and mechanical forces that cells experience within the human body.
About Emulate, Inc.
Emulate Inc. is a privately held company that creates living products for understanding how diseases, medicines, chemicals, and foods affect human health. Our Human Emulation System sets a new standard for recreating true-to-life human biology and is being used to advance product innovation, design, and safety across a range of applications including drug development, agriculture, cosmetics, food, and chemical-based consumer products. Emulate continues to develop a wide range of Organ-Chips and disease models through collaborations with industry partners and internal R&D programs. Emulate is also working with clinical partners to produce Organ-Chips personalized with an individual patient’s stem cells, for applications in precision medicine and personalized health. Our founding team pioneered the Organs-on-Chips technology at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Emulate holds the worldwide exclusive license from Harvard University to a robust and broad intellectual property portfolio for the Organs-on-Chips technology and related systems.
