And that it has received funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda), a US Government agency responsible for countermeasures to bioterrorism, pandemics and other threats.<\/p>\n
Feast told the Herald his firm is aiming to sell product for research-only clinical work by the end of next year, ahead of its full commercial launch.<\/p>\n
The new capital will fund a manufacturing plant in Christchurch and boost staff from six, with four onboarding, to 17 or 18.<\/p>\n
Although he sees a multibillion-dollar market, Feast says his firm will stay based in Canterbury, which has recently emerged as a medtech hub.<\/p>\n
Professor Conan Fee at the University of Canterbury, who mentored Feast while he completed his PhD in biotechnology, spun out the four-year-old Precision Chroma from research he conducted. Feast founded Precision and serves as its chief executive. Bridgewest chipped in pre-seed funds.<\/p>\n
Precision Chroma founder and chief executive Sean Feast.<\/p>\n
Feast told the Herald the seed raise stemmed from him messaging M Ventures\u2019 investment director Dr Oliver Hardick on LinkedIn, shortly after his company was formed in 2022 \u2013 although it would be four years before he had a product he could showcase for funding.<\/p>\n
Hardick is in Auckland for the kick-off of Startup Week (see video above) before travelling to Christchurch for his first Precision Chorma board meeting.<\/p>\n
US$48 billion addressable market<\/p>\n
Feast says the total addressable market for his company\u2019s purification technology is about US$48 billion.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s growing at around 11% per year as pharmaceutical companies increasingly use biological molecules \u2013 right in Precision Chroma\u2019s wheelhouse \u2013 as the building blocks for new drugs, superseding small, synthetic molecules.<\/p>\n
The trend developed momentum with the RNA vaccines developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, which coincided with Feast\u2019s PhD work.<\/p>\n
So what does it do, exactly? <\/p>\n
\u201cPrecision Chroma is developing a new form of 3D-printed designed agarose packed-bed chromatography which enables direct affinity capture of therapeutic proteins from unclarified bioreactor harvest, potentially removing the centrifugation and depth-filtration steps normally required before Protein A chromatography,\u201d Feast says.<\/p>\n
Say what? <\/p>\n
When pharmaceutical companies manufacture biopharmaceuticals, they grow living cells in massive vats. Think of this like brewing a giant batch of soup, where only one tiny, specific ingredient \u2013 the drug protein \u2013 is useful, while everything else (cell debris, waste, fluid) needs to be thrown out, Feast says.<\/p>\n
From left: Precision Chroma’s Anna Pryor, Fabian Dolamore, Sean Feast, Campbell Stevens and Bessie Pei.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, purifying this \u201csoup\u201d uses chromatography columns packed with millions of microscopic beads.<\/p>\n
Imagine trying to filter muddy water by pouring it through a jar filled with marbles. The water squeezes through uneven, random gaps. Particles get stuck, clogging the jar, forcing you to pour slowly under immense pressure, and requiring pre-filtration just to clear the heavy mud.<\/p>\n
Precision Chroma prints customised solid blocks, called monoliths, made of uniform hydrogels and embedded with precisely micro-engineered channels. Instead of an unpredictable pile of marbles, it functions like a multilane highway system designed to let the fluid flow smoothly without clogging, even if it\u2019s full of heavy cell debris.<\/p>\n
The net effect, Feast says, is that many time-consuming steps are replaced by one quick step, in what he describes as world-first technology. The new funding will to towards commercialising the process.<\/p>\n
AI threat?<\/p>\n
Could artificial intelligence gazump Precision Chroma?<\/p>\n
\u201cAI definitely has its place. It\u2019s really good for starting the search,\u201d Feast says. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the end of the day, you have to do lab testing and real-world validation to check what the AI spits out.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people have had a wrong AI response and you can\u2019t take that risk with human health.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Compelling\u2019<\/p>\n
Its headline investor says Precision Chroma has solved problems others found too difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cDownstream purification has struggled to keep pace with the gains in upstream bioprocess productivity,\u201d Hardick says.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrecision Chroma addresses this by re-engineering the chromatography bed while retaining the agarose chemistry, ligands, systems and operating principles bioprocess engineers already know,\u201d Hardick says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are acutely aware of the adoption challenges associated with novel chromatography technologies.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the potential to capture product directly from the bioreactor, while minimising the change required for adoption, is particularly compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speedy<\/p>\n
\u201cTogether we have taken an idea from the University of Canterbury and built it into a commercially relevant bioprocessing platform with genuine global interest and potential, says Bridgewest CEO Saum Vahdat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe speed with which the company has scaled the technology and demonstrated performance underlines how disruptive this platform can be in separations and chromatography.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer. He has recently written about Bridgewest Ventures\u2019 first venture capital fund<\/a>, Icehouse Ventures\u2019 $150m Growth Fund III<\/a>, Irish healthtech Lanas scooping up a Kiwi firm in a $100m-plus deal<\/a>, Ng\u0101i Tahu\u2019s expanded partnership with VC firm Movac<\/a> and Christchurch emerging as an aerospace and medtech hub<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And that it has received funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda), a US Government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32952,138,4487,308069,28642,1757,63059,2082,36091,49753,13313,296,194,22055,5812,90269,111,139,69,190956,47528,2515,3271,1037,145,17454],"class_list":["post-627635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-13m","tag-business","tag-christchurch","tag-chroma","tag-develop","tag-drugs","tag-faster","tag-for","tag-funds","tag-german","tag-giant","tag-into","tag-kiwi","tag-leads","tag-make","tag-merck","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-precision","tag-pumped","tag-raise","tag-should","tag-startup","tag-technology","tag-whose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}