Sarcura

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Klosterneuburg, Austria, Sarcura was established by an interdisciplinary team including Daniela Buchmayr (CEO), cell biology expert Erwin Gorjup, and microfluidics specialist Martin Fischlechner. Buchmayr brought over 15 years of experience from the biopharmaceutical sector, where she identified the need for innovative manufacturing solutions for the emerging field of cell therapies. This insight into the shift from scaling up traditional biopharmaceuticals to scaling out personalized treatments formed the foundation of the company's mission.

Sarcura’s core business was focused on solving the bottlenecks in current cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing, which are often manual, labor-intensive, and difficult to scale, resulting in costs of up to several hundred thousand dollars per dose. The company's vision was to merge semiconductor technology, photonics, and bioengineering to miniaturize and automate these complex workflows. It developed a device platform that used silicon chip technology with integrated photonics and microfluidics to create a fully automated, modular, and closed manufacturing system. This on-chip functionality was designed to enable process management and real-time quality control at a cellular level within a single-use cartridge, aiming to shrink an entire cleanroom and analytics lab into a device the size of a suitcase.

The company's primary product in development was a system to automate and control cell therapy production, with its first device focusing on cell sorting. This technology, exemplified by its SiPlex Prototype chip, integrated multiple cell sorting structures using silicon photonics on a small chip, intended to replace bulky and expensive optical systems like FACS. By doing so, Sarcura aimed to significantly increase production capacity, reduce costs by a factor of 10, and make life-saving treatments like CAR-T therapies more accessible. Between 2021 and 2023, the team developed functional prototypes and initiated a collaboration with imec, a research and development hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Over its lifetime, Sarcura raised approximately €9.6 million through several funding rounds from investors including xista science ventures, Lansdowne Investment Company Cyprus, IST Cube, HCVC, and Nina Capital.