Cytena Bioprocess Solutions (cytenaBPS) in 2020 November successfully raised approx. 1.9 million USD (55 million TWD) in the pre-A round, led by the National development fund of Taiwan, and a listed Sweden 3D printing company Cellink AB, and also received funding in 2019 August from the German biotech company – cytena GmbH.

Obtaining funding after funding, CytenaBPS, a german start-up focused on automation and microtechnology, aims to solve the challenges in cell culture. For example, in the pharmaceutical process of biologics drugs, a cell line development process is required for most biopharmaceuticals. However, the cell line development is a complicated, labor-intensive, and pricey process.

The main reason is that the early-stage culture environment is limited to static culture in 96/24 well plate, which is not an ideal environment for cell lines, and the oxygen supply is often under constraints. These cause the cell lines to exhibit different characteristics with later-stage of bioreactor culture and affect the development schedule.

A revolution of cell culture – c.bird microbioreactor

To optimize and tackle the challenges at hand, cytenaBPS developed a novel microbioreactor –  c.bird™ based on its patented microfluidic technology.

C.bird™ is a high throughput microbioreactor for parallel cultivations in 96 well plates capable of bringing production bioreactor condition to the 150 to 1400 µL scale. Compared to the traditional methods, c.bird™ provides stability while maintaining the vitality of cells,  potentially changing the way biopharmaceuticals used to screen, and further become a new alternative for large-scale bioreactors. c.bird™ speeds up the manufacturing process, bringing an edge to large pharmaceutical companies and research organizations.

“With this capital injection, we can accelerate the development of the next generation of microbioreactor. Lots of top pharmaceutical companies are looking forward to integrating it into their current workflow, and they already signed and booked as the early-beta user. We expect to ship the devices and have their feedback Q1-Q2 next year.” said Charels Tsai, CEO and founder of cytenaBPS

Expanding business at a global scale

The c.bird™ entered the markets in the US, Europe, China, Japan, and Taiwan from July and signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with AstraZeneca, pushing forth the technology in new fields of cell line culture. 

CytenaBPS CFO Elbert Chen said, “cytenaBPS will team up with its international strategic partners cytena GmbH/Cellink AB to showcase products on a global scale. As for the market and research strategy in Taiwan, cytenaBPS plans to recruit more local talents and integrate R&D resources with Taiwan Startup Terrace. The goal is to design new technologies and products for the biotech market.”

cytenaBPS is expanding its business in Taiwan and looking for partners and both medical, microfluidic engineering talents. For more information, you can find it at the following link: www.cytena-bps.com

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