Zafrens Secures $23 Million Investment
San Diego-based multi-modality drug discovery company, Zafrens, has raised $23 million in funding.
Prime Movers Lab led the round, with contributions from BlueYard Capital, KOFA Healthcare, Global Brains, FoundersX Ventures, Alix Ventures, Possible Ventures, Iaso Ventures, Hawktail, and other investors.
The company plans to utilize the funds to optimize breakthrough applications of its Z-Screen™ platform and advance its internal pipeline.
Under the leadership of CEO Swamy Vijayan, Zafrens operates an ultra-high throughput platform designed to isolate, culture, image, and sequence millions of cells per day. This proprietary platform enables the full characterization of diverse cell populations, correlating molecular profiles (DNA, RNA, protein) directly to cell phenotype and function.
The Z-Screen™ represents a significant advancement in throughput and resolution of experiments, expanding the conventional 96-well format to 50,000 – 200,000 wells with integrated imaging and single-cell multi-omic capabilities in each well. This allows for the simultaneous resolution of complex cellular co-culture interactions at molecular and functional levels.
The platform facilitates the mapping of large CRISPR, CAR-T, mRNA libraries, or endogenous molecular heterogeneity to their individual manifestations as cell behavior, cell-cell interactions, and secretions. When exposed to the extensive chemical libraries within Z-Screen, simultaneous functional and molecular profiling reveals hits, structure-activity-relationships, and mechanisms of action, effectively compressing multiple traditional drug-discovery stages into one step.
