Emerging cell therapy company raises $3.7m to accelerate its mission

A new company that promises to develop novel lifesaving cell therapies has attracted additional seed funding from some of the UK's major investors, bringing it one step closer to commercialising ground-breaking cellular research. Mogrify, which has its roots in research carried out at the University of Bristol, will use the funding to market novel IP and cell types generated using its proprietary direct cellular conversion platform, which will form the basis of novel therapeutics in areas including cardiac repair and cartilage regeneration. This latest funding round was led by Ahren Innovation Capital (Ahren), with additional funding from 24Haymarket and the company's new CEO, Dr Darrin M Disley, PhD, DSc, OBE. The seed funding will enable Mogrify to advance its systematic big-data science approach, powered by next-generation sequencing and gene-regulatory data. This is aimed at identifying the optimal combination of transcription factors ( in vitro ) or small molecules ( in vivo ), needed to convert any mature cell type into any other mature cell type without going through a pluripotent stem cellor even a progenitor cell-state. It's this approach that makes Mogrify uniquely placed to address the issues of efficacy, safety and scalability currently associated with cell therapy development and manufacturing, which is estimated to represent a $30 billion USD market opportunity. Through its internal development and partnership programs, Mogrify is also positioned to directly address growing markets that are unserved by approved cell therapies, such as cardiac repair and cartilage regeneration end-user markets, estimated to be worth $120 billion USD and $7 billion USD by 2022 and 2025, respectively.