Singapore headquartered Genetic Design and Manufacturing Corporation (GDMC), a design and manufacturing organisation that focuses on next generation advanced genetic therapies, has announced a Series A funding of $21 million. The funds will be used to accelerate novel technology and process efficiency improvements to drive greater manufacturing cost reductions for partners who aim to advance medicines through clinical trials and towards commercialisation.

The funding round is led by Celadon Partners, an Asia private equity firm focused on investments in industries ready to adopt transformative technology and new business models. 

The round also included premier investors such as WI Harper Group, a leading cross- border venture capital firm, and SEEDS Capital, the investment arm of government agency Enterprise Singapore, alongside global biotech venture capital firms like NSG Ventures.

“The process of manufacturing a genetic medicine is extremely intricate and demands a specialized and highly knowledgeable team to successfully bring it to fruition. We are grateful to our investors for their support in realizing our vision of democratizing the manufacturing of advanced genetic medicines while levelling the playing field for innovative companies and leaders in advanced therapies. With our recent funding, we aspire to cultivate stronger collaborations with more partners in the US and APAC region, working hand in hand to improve the state of healthcare and treatment for patients” said Michael Koeris, CEO and Co-Founder of GDMC. 

The Company’s headquarters is in Singapore, where GDMC has initiated construction on a 155,000 sq ft pre-clinical, clinical, and commercial facility supporting Cell, Gene, and Nucleic Acid Therapies (CGNT). GDMC's partnership approach is centered on improving genetic medicine design and development through synthetic biology, as well as focusing on three market-relevant pillars: success-based partnerships with sponsors, technical innovation, and significantly lower cost of goods. 

A new partnership approach was established through GDMC centered on better upfront genetic medicine development through design and synthetic biology, and a focus on three pillars the market is demanding: a success-based partnership with the sponsor, technical innovation, and a significantly lower cost of goods.

GDMC has developed a unique Partnership for Drug Manufacturing Organisation (PDMO)

model, offering support to companies, including startups, from drug design to being the one-stop shop for innovators from design, manufacturing through to quality assurance and regulatory support for eventual market entry. The company’s tech-driven design house with manufacturing is also able to help generate purpose-developed technologies to accelerate next generation medicine design tools, while at the same time leverage Machine Learning to generate novel toolkits to overcome current challenges in manufacturing. GDMC’s focus is to manufacture advanced therapy modalities including customised mRNA, plasmid DNA, AAV and Lentiviral Vectors. GDMC’s collaborative partnership approach based on design can help clients reduce manufacturing time by up to three-fold.