Indee Labs

Indee Labs was founded in August 2015 with a "mission to democratize gene-modified cell therapies," such as chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-T). The team is developing a novel transfection technology that can rapidly and efficiently deliver a variety of genetic material (e.g., DNA, RNA, protein, and/or various complexes) to human primary immune cells in seconds.

The core technology, microfluidic vortex shedding (µVS), uses a microscopic fluid dynamics phenomenon based on vortex shedding to hydrodynamically porate the cell membrane, allowing for the deliberate introduction of genetic material to human primary immune cells. Vortex shedding is not a new phenomenon. It can be observed as water flows past boulders in rivers while also being seen as clouds drift over mountains.

µVS is not the only transfection technology; however, it is shown to be able to rapidly deliver a range of genetic material to human primary immune cells with high cell recovery, high cell viability, high efficiency, and high throughput. Furthermore, µVS results in negligible perturbation of immune cell proliferation, activation, exhaustion, phenotype, function, and transcriptome-wide gene expression. µVS is also induced with a 5 mm x 10 mm microfluidic device manufactured using industry-standard semiconductor processes. Cumulatively, this means µVS is an extremely scalable, gentle, and robust alternative to incumbent technologies, such as viral transduction and electroporation.

As of May 2018, Indee Labs had accumulated more than USD$6.1 million dollars in angel, venture, and non-dilutive capital.

In July 2017, Indee Labs closed USD$1.3M in accelerator and angel financing from SOSV, IndieBio, Jude Gomila, Shaun Maguire, Y Combinator and Jaffray Woodriff (executed by his family office, Felton Group, LLC) among others.

In May 2018, Indee Labs closed out a seed round resulting in USD$2.6M in angel and venture financing from Founders Fund, Main Sequence Ventures, Social+Capital also among others.