Photo | Courtesy | iVexSol
Rodney Rietze, CEO of iVexSol
Updated: December 11, 2020
Worcester gene therapy startup raises $13M for manufacturing facility
Photo | Grant Welker
Jon Weaver, center, the president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, gives a tour in December 2019 of the incubator's new startup space under construction in Worcester. At left is Travis McCready, then-president and CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. At right is Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.
A gene therapy startup company at Worcester's Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives incubator has raised $13 million in new funding to be used to establish a manufacturing facility in Lexington.
The company, iVexSol, makes what's called lentiviral vectors, a type of gene delivery system critical to potentially life-changing cell and gene therapies. It uses the raw form of HIV, which doesn't include the same harmful elements of the disease, and essentially highjacks it for therapeutic benefit, CEO Rodney Rietze said.
The company says its technology greatly reduces the complexity, cost and development time of these therapies.
The new funding, which was announced Dec. 1, is by far the largest injection of capital yet for iVexSol. The investors are Casdin Capital, a New York life sciences investment firm, and BioLife Solutions, a Seattle-area firm making cell and gene therapies. A third unnamed investor was involved, iVexSol said.
Funding so far for iVexSol totals $15.2 million. That'll help it grow from four employees today to another 20 within the next year, and another planned 25 in the year beyond that.
The Lexington site will be retrofitted in an existing life sciences building, with a plan to launch production in the first quarter of 2022.
The company, which began leasing at MBI in Worcester in September 2019, plans to keep its presence in the city at least through its lease at the end of 2021. It chose the Lexington site because it quickly needed a specialized lab space that wasn't available in Worcester, Rietze said.
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