Blackbird backs Australia 3D cell culture platform
Australia’s Blackbird Ventures has led a $25 million Series B round for Inventia Life Science, a local start-up that provides 3D cell cultures for research and clinical purposes.
“It’s a technology that improves cancer and other cellular research in a fundamental way, and the benefits of this will reshape many biomedical industries, in particular the pharmaceutical industry,” Niki Scevak, a partner at Blackbird, said in a statement.
“Our financial support of Inventia reflects our firm belief that there is a broad-based and urgent need in the biomedical world for what the company has developed and that its impact is going to be truly generational.”
Inventia develops 3D bioprinters and formulates materials used in making artificial live tissue called bioinks. The idea is to allow human cells to be printed in three-dimensional structures to support cancer research and drug discovery. Its platform, Rastrum, is said to be a global leader in this field.
The Series B coincides with the launch of operations and the appointment of a sales director in the US, where biomedical research and drug discovery markets are estimated to be worth some $40 billion. The company said it has already secured three leading US pharmaceutical companies as customers.
The fresh capital will be used largely to build out the US presence, leveraging a perceived increase in global appetite for new approaches to cancer research and the development and validation of new drugs. The overall team is expected to grow from 36 to 150 by the end of 2024.
Total funding since the company’s inception in 2013 is $32 million, with previous investors including Skip Capital, a VC firm associated with Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar. Skip also contributed to the latest investment.
Blackbird raised A$500 million ($358 million) for its fourth fund last year and named Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian’s other co-founder, as chairman. It claimed at the time that the fund positioned it as Australia’s largest VC firm with some A$1.2 billion in assets under management.
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