Portal Biotechnologies Accelerates Growth with Latest Round Led by NFX, Expanded DARPA Contract, and Broad Adoption Across Top Pharma and Academic Centers

• Oversubscribed $9M round to underpin rapid platform expansion across drug discovery, AI data generation, and cell therapy manufacturing
• Portal surpasses over 100 customers to date, including public highlights by Microsoft, Merck, AbbVie, Mass General Brigham, Ragon Institute, and Purdue University
• Expanded on initial $8M DARPA award with Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative (EEI) contract to supercharge commercialization of point-of-care cell therapy manufacturing

WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Portal Biotechnologies, Inc. (“Portal”), a cell engineering and drug discovery platform company, announced updates on significant commercial progress and the closing of an oversubscribed $9M financing round led by NFX and participation from existing investors including IA Ventures, Pear VC, Undeterred Ventures, IKJ Capital, and TechU Ventures.

Portal is building the universal infrastructure for cell engineering across drug discovery and cell therapy. The proprietary platform leverages mechanoporation to enable efficient, scalable delivery of RNA, gene editors, probes, and other molecules into hard-to-transfect cells across many cell types and workflows.

The capital will accelerate commercial scaling of the Portal^® platform, which solves one of biology's ultimate bottlenecks: delivering a broad range of complex molecules safely and efficiently inside cells without compromising their function.

Portal’s expansion efforts are focused on three key areas:

• Novel drug discovery workflows
• Cost-effective multi-perturbation AI data generation
• Next-gen cell therapies with our academic and biopharma partners

"Portal is achieving what very few biotech platforms manage in their first three years: meaningful commercial revenue, technical validation from the world's largest companies, and a genuinely game-changing vision," said Omri Amirav-Drory, Ph.D., General Partner at NFX Bio. "With an elegant, scalable engineering platform, Portal is perfectly positioned to underpin future drug discovery, TechBio, and cell therapy ecosystems. We are thrilled to lead this round and back the Portal team."

Since its launch, Portal's proprietary mechanoporation technology has seen rapid adoption by top pharma, AI x Bio tech giants, and world-renowned academic centers. Recent highlights include:

• Rethinking Drug Discovery: Researchers at Merck, AbbVie, and Purdue have presented novel applications ranging from screening impermeable degraders and peptide molecules to novel DEL and target-engagement assays. Multiple pharma customers have upgraded to the high-throughput Galaxy-i™ platform since its launch earlier this year.
• Generating Rich Biological Data for AI: The Ragon Institute of Harvard/MIT/MGB and Microsoft have committed to a two-year project using Portal to generate model training data and map immune responses at scale. Additional collaborations in multi-perturbation screens are also underway.
• Advancing Next-Generation Cell Therapy at the Point of Care: DARPA expanded its initial $8M contract to develop a portable, field-deployable device for rapid point-of-care cell therapy production, and is now supporting commercialization through its EEI program. Mass General Brigham also recently presented at ASGCT on the use of Portal's platform for same-day, circRNA-based multifunctional CAR-T production.

"Portal unlocks many biology applications far beyond what has been feasible with existing technologies," said Armon Sharei, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Portal. "We’re excited to work with frontier partners to unlock new possibilities in cell engineering, drug discovery, and AI data generation."

About Portal Biotechnologies: Portal is building the universal infrastructure for cell engineering across drug discovery and cell therapy. The proprietary platform enables efficient, scalable delivery of RNA, gene editors, probes, and other molecules into hard-to-transfect cells across many cell types and workflows. At more than 100 customer sites, including the top 10 pharma, researchers use Portal to run high-throughput, physiologically relevant screens and de-risk targets earlier, while cell therapy developers leverage the platform to multi-engineer cells beyond the limits of viral or electroporation methods. Integrated with leading high-throughput robotics and with GMP manufacturing systems, Portal is powering both next-generation discovery and laying the groundwork for future point-of-care cell therapy manufacturing. For more information, please visit https://portal.bio/.