Obatala Sciences, a New Orleans-based company that helps drug companies bring new drugs to market faster with diversity-focused testing technology, raised $3 million in its latest funding round from a group of investors.
The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Obatala’s products, which include alternatives to traditional testing, to seek to treat and prevent obesity, diabetes, cancer and regenerative medicines.
Obatala, co-founded by its chief executive Trivia Frazier five years ago, focuses on innovation in drug and therapeutic testing, which is often a laborious and multi-year process that moves slowly from testing on cells to animals to humans. Obatala developed a method to simulate in vitro fat and use it to predict human responses. The technique, known as “fat on a chip,” allows testing on a wider variety of tissues, making the testing process faster and cheaper.
move to the beach
Fraser said the company had laid the groundwork with earlier funding rounds and now aims to grow rapidly over the next few years. “Our customer base is growing strongly and is looking to license more intellectual property and implement sales and marketing elements to help us scale,” she said in a phone interview.
The company is currently based at the Advanced Materials Institute at the University of New Orleans. It plans to relocate to the new space, which is three times the size of the existing site at the UNO Beach facility, over the next 18 months or so, and double its staff from 14 over the next 18 months or so, she said.
The latest funding round, which Obatara calls “Series A” to illustrate that it follows an earlier “seed” round to fund the commercialization of the company’s products, was led by être Venture Capital, a female-led venture fund.
PhD. Trivia Frazier, CEO and president of Obatala Sciences, a biotech company whose “fat-on-a-chip” technology helps test new drugs faster than traditional methods.
Jennifer Kuan, a partner at être Venture Capital, noted that recent developments have enhanced the appeal of Obatala’s approach in the field of drug and therapeutic testing.
“Recently, the (Food and Drug Administration) has expressed the need to increase predictability by reducing the use of animal-derived tissues, while the (National Institutes of Health) has been calling for increased testing diversity,” she said in the announcement. “Obatala Sciences’ various human-derived products are precise solutions designed for these market directions.”
Development of Matrigel Alternatives
Other investors in this round are the Ochsner Lafayette General Healthcare Innovation Fund II, which was launched three years ago to invest in growth companies like Obatala. The fund is one of a group of investors that had invested in Obatala two years ago, including other Ochsner investment entities. Benson Capital Partners, as well as Elevate Capital Fund and The Hackett-Robertson-Tobe Group, are also investing as part of Gayle Benson’s investment empire.
Another milestone the company is seeking is the approval of several new products designed to provide an alternative to Matrigel, a widely tested stem cell culture product that has recently been chronically in short supply.