Danbury – October 28, 2026 -- CellsBin has received a Direct-to-Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to advance CB-Insight, its blood-based test for multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow.
Federal award follows 108 BioCapital-led Series A
The NCI funding comes after CellsBin's Series A financing, announced in September and led by 108 BioCapital. Together, the private and federal money moves the myeloma program beyond early proof-of-concept work and into formal patient testing and development of a test that can be offered to doctors.
CellsBin first presented early myeloma results at the 2024 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting. Privately funded work since then made the company eligible for the Direct-to-Phase II track, which lets small businesses that have already shown feasibility skip the Phase I stage.
Yale-led study will enroll and follow patients prospectively
The NCI-funded program includes a large clinical study that will enroll and follow patients going forward. Elan Gorshein, DO, JD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology) at Yale School of Medicine, is principal investigator.
The study will measure how well CellsBin's technology detects and recovers living myeloma cells from patients' blood. Results will be compared with standard clinical tests, including bone marrow tests where appropriate.
Live-cell recovery targets the bone marrow biopsy gap
Examining myeloma cells directly has typically required a bone marrow biopsy, in which a needle removes a sample from the bone. CellsBin instead looks for the few myeloma cells circulating in the bloodstream and captures them intact and alive.
The platform combines high-resolution imaging, microfluidics and machine learning to isolate extremely rare cells from the vast number of normal cells in a blood sample. Because the cells stay alive, they can be studied for genetic and molecular features rather than simply counted.
The long-term aim is for doctors to check the disease more often from a routine blood draw. CEO Ali Kabiri, PhD, said the award "moves us from proving the concept to building a test for clinical use."
CellsBin plans a CLIA laboratory-developed test
Under the award, CellsBin plans to test the technology in patients, confirm that it produces consistent results, and prepare it for clinical laboratory use. That includes work toward a future laboratory-developed test (LDT) offered under CLIA, the federal standards for clinical laboratory testing.