Michael is the founder and CEO of Northpond Ventures and a former co-founder and managing partner at Sands Capital Ventures. He also holds academic and research roles at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University.
Andrea brings operating and investing experience across life sciences and technology. She is currently a director at Northpond Ventures, following corporate development, commercial, and marketing roles at PerkinElmer, Merck Millipore, and Mitra Biotech.
Novalis LifeSciences led the Series B round, which will fund team expansion and platform commercialisation.
"Our mission as a company is to enable widespread patient access to life saving cell and gene therapies. One of the biggest obstacles to achieving this is cell and gene therapy manufacturing processes that are too expensive, too highly variable and too low throughput. Our team is focused on the urgent need to enhance the ability of cell and gene therapy developers, CDMOs and Academic Medical Centers to deliver these therapies to as many patients as possible as quickly as possible,"
The Series A round was led by Northpond Ventures and Octopus Ventures to help bring the company manufacturing platform to market.
"Closing a significant Series A round, during these uncertain times, further validates Ori’s disruptive approach to fully automating cell and gene therapy manufacturing to increase throughput, improve quality, and decrease costs,"
