VintaBio, a contract development and manufacturing organization specializing in life sciences, emerged out of stealth on Tuesday and said it had raised $64 million in venture funding led by Decheng Capital.
The Philadelphia-based company also named David Radspinner, an industry veteran with previous stints at Eli Lilly and Sanofi, as its CEO, and announced the opening of a bespoke viral vector manufacturing facility in Philadelphia.
VintaBio was founded by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia colleagues Junwei Sun and Dr. Shangzhen Zhou. Both have significant experience in gene therapies and biomedical research.
Gene Therapy Smarts
“I co-founded VintaBio to make sure viral vectors never prevent someone from receiving a life-changing treatment,” said Zhou. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Zhou was part of teams that developed the first gene therapy for congenital blind patients, which later became Luxturna, and another for babies with spinal muscular atrophy, now known as Zolgensma.
Sun co-founded Spark Therapeutics, a University of Pennsylvania spinout that developed Luxturna, the first gene therapy to receive FDA approval. Luxturna is marketed by Roche in the United States and by Novartis in Europe.
Highly Focused CDMO
“VintaBio is well-positioned to alleviate the viral vector bottleneck, and streamline cell and gene therapy development and manufacturing,” Radspinner, who recently joined the company, said in a post on LinkedIn. “There are no commercially available facilities designed and built specifically for cell and gene therapy CDMO services,” he also said.
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Radspinner has nearly a decade’s experience in leading global marketing and sales at companies such as GE Healthcare Life Sciences (Cytiva) and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Prior to joining VintaBio, he was with ILC Dover, a New Mountain Capital portfolio company, where he oversaw its biotherapeutics portfolio. Radspinner has a PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Arizona.
Decheng Capital founder and managing director Min Cui said VintaBio comes with the “highest degrees” of specialization and industry experience in a “field of retrofitted, generalist operations.” This focus and world-class expertise will help the company “truly stand out and make a difference in an undefined market lacking specialist leaders,” he said.
Decheng Capital, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has raised $1 billion from investors from four funds. It has made about 75 portfolio investments and 17 exits since its inception in 2011. Its exits include Invitae, Arcus Biosciences and Cue. Decheng’s recent portfolio investments include CG Oncology, LevitasBio and Acelyrin.
