BOSTON — Gene therapies can cost $2 million or more per patient, and a large part of that price is the cost of making them. A Cambridge startup called Tessellate Bio says it can bring that cost down sharply with a machine about the size of a microwave oven.
The company announced Tuesday that it has raised $46 million from a group of investors led by a venture firm in San Francisco. It plans to use the money to build ten of its machines and test them with two academic hospitals.
How it works
Most gene therapies use a harmless virus to carry a working gene into a patient’s cells. Making those viruses usually means growing them in large steel tanks in specialized factories, a process that can take months and fail for reasons that are hard to predict.
Tessellate’s system grows the viruses in a small, sealed cartridge, with sensors that adjust conditions every few seconds. The company says one machine can make enough for a single patient’s dose in about nine days.
«We’re not trying to replace the big factories,» said co-founder Dr. Oyelaran Bassey, a chemical engineer. «We’re trying to make it possible for a hospital to make a dose for one child with a rare disease, without waiting a year.»
The skeptics
Manufacturing experts said the hard part is not making a small batch, but proving to regulators that every batch is the same. «Consistency is the whole game,» said one former FDA reviewer, who asked not to be named because she now consults for companies in the field. Tessellate says it plans to share its first data with regulators next year.