Vineti Completes $33.5M in Series B

Vineti, Inc., the leading software automation and analytics platform for cell and gene therapies, today announced the closing of $33.5 million in Series B investment to support expansion of the company's technology platform for individualized therapies. The financing is being led by Canaan and DFJ, with participation from GE Ventures, Section 32, Casdin Capital, and LifeForce Capital, along with other undisclosed investors.

The additional capital will be used to further advance the first cloud-based "platform of record" specifically built to move transformative new personalized therapies such as CAR-T cell therapy into mainstream medicine. The funding will also support Vineti's further expansion in Europe and Asia-Pacific, providing a global solution to a critical personalized medicine barrier.

Vineti's configurable, cloud-based software platform improves cell and gene therapy product performance, promotes regulatory compliance, and enables faster, safer, broader access for patients. The platform automates, orchestrates, and simplifies the complex workflows behind personalized therapies, and helps pharmaceutical partners address emerging opportunities and challenges as these therapies move into mainstream medicine. The Vineti platform also enables seamless integrations with other parts of the therapy ecosystem. Vineti is currently serving patients, healthcare providers, and researchers in a large, growing, global healthcare network.

Nina Kjellson, General Partner at Canaan, and Michael Pellini, M.D., Managing Partner at Section 32 and Chairman of Foundation Medicine, Inc., will join Vineti's Board of Directors. All of Vineti's founding investors will continue to participate in the company's growth, including Mayo Clinic Ventures, and collaborate to drive even more new solutions for patients, healthcare providers, and therapeutic innovators.

"We are in a crucial window to get production and delivery of personalized therapies right for a rapidly growing number of patients who are desperately in need." said Amy DuRoss, CEO and co-founder at Vineti. "Vineti is humbled to be working with the leading scientific, clinical trial, and commercial teams in personalized medicine. We are leveraging the best of SIlicon Valley "critical path" enterprise software to ensure that the right therapy gets to the right patient at the right time, safely and cost-effectively."

In 2017, the first two CAR-T cell therapies from Novartis and Kite, a Gilead company, were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and launched, underscoring the rapid growth in the field of cell and gene therapy. As a result of a commercial agreement, Vineti helped Kite reach its approval milestone by providing critical cloud-based infrastructure to help support commercial access to Kite's Yescarta™ therapy.

For all its pharmaceutical partners, Vineti's platform provides critical capabilities, including comprehensive and consistent Chain of Custody and Chain of Identify – two required processes vital to the traceability, transparency, security, and safety of the entire personalized therapy process. Vineti supports a range of cell and gene therapy innovators, including pharmaceutical partners not yet publicly announced.

"Vineti is aligning every participant in the field of cell and gene therapy by unifying siloed operations, providing integrations, optimizing supply chains, and securely managing the flow of sensitive information," said Nina Kjellson, General Partner at Canaan. "Ultimately, this successful transformation of legacy infrastructure means radically improved efficiency, transparency, and patient confidence in personalized therapies."

The recent FDA approval activity marks the beginning of a wave of new therapies with the potential to transform the treatment of cancer and serious genetic disorders. By late 2017, there were 946 cell and gene therapy clinical trials underway worldwide, with more than 53 percent of those in oncology[1]. In 2018, oncology is expected to remain the largest market in medicine and is projected to grow to $165 billion by 2021[2].

With Vineti, caregivers, suppliers, and pharmaceutical pioneers are empowered to reach more patients sooner by partnering their products and therapies with a digital, data-driven platform focused on personalized patient-based medical products, scalability, efficiency and safety. In addition to its work with its pharmaceutical partners, the company continues its close collaboration with healthcare providers, regulators, and leading researchers.

"We are excited to support Vineti as the company further expands its platform to increase the efficiency of the entire individualized cell and gene therapy delivery workflow while improving patient access, accelerating delivery of life-saving treatments, and enhancing safety and regulatory compliance,' said Michael Pellini, M.D., Managing Partner at Section 32. "As we push forward with our goal of enabling better health outcomes for people across the world, we are thrilled to see increasing numbers of patients in the clinic benefiting from personalized therapies, with the support of Vineti's innovative technology."

The Vineti platform is available directly from Vineti. Patients, clinicians, suppliers, and pharmaceutical developers can learn more at www.vineti.com.

[1] The Alliance for Regenerative Medicine 2017 Annual Data Report

[2] Cowen Therapeutic Categories Outlook 2017 Report

About Vineti, Inc.
Vineti is the first commercial, configurable cloud-based platform to expand patient access to life-saving cell and gene therapies. Vineti was co-founded by GE and the Mayo Clinic to solve the key challenges patients, medical providers, biopharmaceutical companies and regulators face in the delivery and commercialization of individualized therapies. The Vineti "platform of record" integrates logistics, manufacturing and clinical data for individualized therapies to align and orchestrate the cell and gene therapy process and improve product performance overall. Caregivers and pharmaceutical pioneers are empowered to help more patients more effectively and safely, treatments are better understood and improved over time, and most importantly, there's an opportunity to provide greater health outcomes-and cures-to patients in need. The company is growing rapidly, and the Vineti platform is now in use world-wide. For more information, please visit www.vineti.com. Sign up to follow @vinetiworks on https://twitter.com/vinetiworks.