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Yale Spinout, Singleron Biotechnologies, Secures a Pre-Series A Financing for $10M

New Haven, CT, USA (June 24, 2019) ­

– Singleron Biotechnologies, a yound and fast growing company developing high-throughput single-cell multiomics platform products with a focus on clinical applications, this month secured a pre-series A financing worth more than $10M in an agreement led by Sherpa Healthcare Partners, a healthcare-focused venture capital fund. Singleron will use the proceeds to accelerate development and commercialization of new products, including an instrument that automates single cell separation and subsequent library construction, build accredited clinical laboratories, and expand its sales and marketing operations while establishing a location in New Haven.

Founded in 2018, Singleron has attracted a team of experts with diverse expertise. The company currently employs more than 60 full-time people and the leadership team has a combined 50 years of industry experience in multinational companies, including QIAGEN, Beckton Dickinson, Illumina, TSMC, and Novogene. Sherpa Healthcare Partners, also founded in 2018, has teamed up a group of professional investors who have been working together for more than 10 years, investing across different sectors in the healthcare market including biopharma, medical device, and medical.

“Single-cell analysis has brought a completely new dimension to research, diagnosis, and treatment of human diseases,” said Nan Fang, Founder and CEO of Singleron. “Complex diseases such as cancer and immune system disorders can only be accurately deciphered if measured at single-cell resolution. At Singleron, we are focused on developing single-cell analysis products and solutions for clinical applications.”

Fang said the new investments from leading VC fund Sherpa Healthcare Partners is a validation of their technology and strategy. The proceeds will enable them to speed up the application of their single-cell products in clinics. One of the key components of Singleron’s single-cell products is based on technology developed at Yale University in the laboratory of Rong Fan, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Yale and Cofounder of Singleron. The company currently has an exclusive license from Yale to the technology.

Further solidifying their relationship, Darren Cai, founding partner of Sherpa Healthcare Partners, will join Singleron’s board.

“The pre-A financing will accelerate the development of our microdevice technology to really democratize single-cell sequencing for wide-spread biomedical applications. It also opens the opportunity to expand the operation and business in Connecticut and contributes to the growth of biotech industry in the greater New Haven area,” Fan said. “I am also truly delighted to have Yale alum Darren Cai join the Board and lead this round of investment.”

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to invest in Singleron and work with a great team of entrepreneurs and scientists,” Cai said. “The founders of Singleron are at the frontier of single-cell sequencing, a fast developing field with unlimited potential, both scientific and commercial. We have high expectations for Singleron to play key roles in the advance of science and translational medicine propelled by single-cell sequencing and related technologies. As a Yale alum, I am also very happy to support a startup that contributes to growth in New Haven.”

Singleron’s founders and technical team possess extensive and diverse hands-on experience in single cell analysis, genomics, microfluidic systems, bioinformatics, database construction, instrument design, and clinical product development.

“Singleron is another one of Yale’s success stories where the research of our incredibly innovative faculty has led to a major impact in the market,” said Jon Soderstrom, Managing Director of the Office of Cooperative Research. “Within two years of incorporation, they’ve been able to establish a global presence for their company through an initial base in China. Now, with this new round of financing they’ll be able to establish a foundation locally while adding jobs to the New Haven economy. Growth like Singleron’s is a prime example of Yale’s commitment to innovation, improvement, and positive impact to the community.”

Since its incorporation, Singleron has also quickly developed key proprietary technologies and methods on microfluidic system design, tissue storage and processing, single cell barcoding and amplification, data analysis algorithms and data mining, and applied for over ten patents and software copyrights. The company launched its GEXSCOPE single cell RNAseq Library Prep kit, a kit enabling highly parallel single cell separation and RNA sequencing library preparation with a portable microfluidics chip and all necessary reagents, early this year, and has already worked with over thirty prominent research institutes, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, both in China and overseas, to promote the adoption of innovative single cell analysis technologies in clinics and drug development.