A French startup wants to decentralize cell and gene therapy manufacturing, making it ‘the size of a book’

Lei Lei Wu

News Reporter

Jérémie Laurent stumbled into biology.

While studying aerospace engineering, all of Laurent’s classes were about math, so he began taking biology classes as an escape. “I just fell in love with biology,” he said.

As a PhD student, he started a project at the intersection of engineering and biology — a microfluidics cell and gene therapy manufacturing platform. That gave birth to Astraveus, a French biotech that largely relied on public grant funding from the EU and French government for its first few years.

Today, Astraveus announced a seed round of €16.5 million, or about $18 million. Investors include French life sciences VC AdBio partners and Bpifrance Large Venture, as well as the venture arms of two Big Pharmas — Merck KGaA and Johnson & Johnson.

Astraveus’ goal is to develop an automated cell and gene therapy manufacturing machine via microfluidics, which Laurent says helps cut the amount of reagents required and also increases the efficiency of making the therapies. “We take from nature and we reproduce,” Laurent said in an interview. “All your organs — all the organs of animals — mostly are microfluidic systems.”

By using microfluidics, Astraveus, while still in early stages, has developed prototypes that are relatively small compared to currently used bioreactors — “basically the size of a book,” Laurent said. That also means the manufacturing doesn’t have to be centered at a specific location.

“The idea is essentially to put everything that would happen in conventional cell and gene therapy manufacturing facilities into a benchtop system,” Laurent said. “Not only automated, but a precise and reliable service so as to take as much of the pain and complexity away.”

With the seed funding, Astraveus plans to do further testing on its prototypes and to further mature the platform. The hope is that the technology will not only help manufacture commercial products but also be used by companies that are currently developing new cell and gene therapies.

Laurent noted that quality control of cell and gene therapy manufacturing is a challenge, and regulatory practices vary country to country: “You need the type of solution that brings reliability, quality and has built-in features that ultimately lessen pressure on the quality control and quality assurance environment that is more difficult to decentralize otherwise.”