Australia-based Inventia Life Science opens first U.S. location

The Australian biotech Inventia Life Science has opened an office and facility in Wilmington, Delaware.

The new location is based at the Innovation Space, which offers lab space and resources to science startups.

Inventia Life Science had investigated a handful of other regions before settling on Delaware, including Philadelphia, San Diego and Texas.

The bioprinting company has also hired its first U.S. employee, Dwayne Dexter as director of sales and operations. Dexter has a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology.

Inventia Life Science recently won AU$35 million in Series B funding. The company has won approximately AU$45 million to date.

Inventia’s Rostrum [Image courtesy of Inventia Life Science]

Inventia focuses on creating life-like 3D human tissues for drug and therapy research. The company’s Rastrum 3D cell culture platform can be used for a variety of biomedical applications including testing new drugs in a 3D cellular environment. According to the company, the testing platform can help drug developers weed out drug candidates that are ill suited for clinical trials.

Inventia notes that more than 90% of drug candidates fail in human clinical studies.

Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

Its Series B fundraising round has enabled the company to launch its Rastrum product in the U.S.

Inventia has “seen a strong international demand from leading research institutes and top 10 global pharmaceutical companies for Rastrum – four of which use Rastrum for their drug discovery programs,” Dexter said in a press release.

Dexter previously worked as the director of U.S. operations at Mimetas, which provides organ-on-a-chip technology.

The Innovation Stations is based at the DuPont Experimental Station campus, which is a storied collection of research and development laboratories founded in 1903.

In 2020, Inventia won Fast Company’s Changing Ideas Award for experimental science.

Under its Inventia Skin umbrella, the company is also working on skin regeneration.