Portal Biotechnologies has been awarded an $8 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Biotechnology Office (BTO) for its Red Blood Cell (RBC) Factory Program.
Its mission is to develop a compact, portable system capable of rapidly loading diverse therapeutic cargo into red blood cells (RBCs) at the point of care, allowing for field-deployable, personalized and scalable cell therapies.
By enabling rapid, on-demand modification of RBCs, the technology has the potential to transform personalized medical interventions in both military and civilian contexts, particularly in remote or resource-limited environments.
This DARPA project builds on Portal’s proprietary mechanoporation technology that passes patient cells through thin silicon membranes to enable delivery of virtually any material into any cell type - a critical step in cell therapy generation. Since it started operations in early 2023, Portal has launched three product lines, including the award-winning Galaxy instrument, the clinical-scale MilliBooster cartridge, and has established over 50 paid partnerships (including a majority of the top 10 global pharma). Key to the RBC Factory program is leveraging the team’s existing know-how on how to rapidly develop mechanoporation instruments and consumables across scales and apply them to historically challenging cell types like RBCs.
