Partillion Bioscience Secures $2.1 Million Grant for Cell-Cell Interaction Sequencing

Partillion Bioscience, a company that develops advanced cell analysis technologies, has secured a significant grant to advance its research. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has awarded the company a two-year, $2.1 million grant through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. This marks the company's tenth SBIR award and brings its total non-dilutive federal funding to over $8 million, roughly equal to the private investment it has received so far.

Founded in 2024, Partillion Bioscience is at the forefront of functional cell analysis, leveraging its proprietary Nanovial technology. This technology preserves defined cell pairs, captures functional outputs such as secretion, activation, and killing, and links these to sequencing data. The company's latest grant will enable it to scale its Cell-Cell-seq workflows to include up to one million cell pairs. The grant will also support the development of new analysis tools and the broadening of compatibility with additional sequencing platforms.

"This award is meaningful because it reflects the scientific merit of Cell-Cell-seq and gives us the resources to move the platform forward," stated Joseph de Rutte, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Partillion Bioscience. "It allows us to pursue ambitious scientific work while keeping our private capital focused on customer adoption and commercial expansion."

Partillion's technology has already garnered recognition, including the 2020 SLAS Innovation Award, 2022 SLAS New Product Award, and the 2025 CYTO Innovation & Technology Showcase Award. The company's research has been featured in prestigious scientific journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, PNAS, Science Advances, and ACS Nano.

In addition to its scientific achievements, Partillion has also made strides in commercialization. In 2024, it entered into a distribution partnership with Sony Corporation, marking a significant step towards wider adoption of its technology. The company's Nanovial platform has also played a key role in a research collaboration with UCLA, USC, and Caltech, supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

"The expansion of the Nanovial platform's compatibility with leading single-cell sequencing platforms, the development of turnkey analysis software, and the generation of large-scale, interaction-resolved datasets create new opportunities for Partillion's commercial growth," noted Eric Moessinger, Partner (Advisory) & Head of Life Sciences at NanoDimension, Inc.

With this new grant, Partillion Bioscience is poised to make substantial progress in advancing the field of single-cell analysis. The company's Cell-Cell-seq workflows will be further refined and scaled, potentially transforming how researchers study cellular interactions and their role in disease and therapeutic response.