Los Angeles – September 13, 2026 -- Partillion Bioscience has secured a two-year, $2.1 million NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), pushing the company's total non-dilutive federal funding past $8 million.
Tenth SBIR grant matches private capital raised to date
The award, Partillion's 10th SBIR grant, was competitively secured through NIH's Direct-to-Phase II mechanism and roughly matches the company's private investment total, with no additional equity exchanged. The funding, awarded under grant number R44GM165220, will support development of the company's Cell-Cell-seq workflows over two years.
Cell-Cell-seq targets a gap in single-cell sequencing
Most single-cell sequencing workflows analyze cells in isolation, restricting researchers' ability to study cellular interactions that drive disease progression and therapeutic response. Cell-Cell-seq, built on Partillion's proprietary Nanovial technology protected by 17 issued patents, preserves defined cell pairs, captures functional outputs such as secretion, activation, and killing, and links those readouts to sequencing data.
Grant will scale datasets to one million cell pairs
The new funding will let Partillion scale Cell-Cell-seq toward datasets of up to one million cell pairs, while broadening compatibility with additional sequencing platforms and developing new analysis tools. "This award is meaningful because it reflects the scientific merit of Cell-Cell-seq and gives us the resources to move the platform forward," said Joseph de Rutte, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Partillion Bioscience. He added that the grant allows the company to pursue ambitious scientific work while keeping private capital focused on customer adoption and commercial expansion.
Sony Biotechnology partnership and academic collaborations build momentum
Partillion launched a distribution partnership with Sony Biotechnology in 2024. Its Nanovial platform also supported a research collaboration involving UCLA, USC, and Caltech, backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Eric Moessinger, Partner (Advisory) & Head of Life Sciences at NanoDimension, Inc., said expanding Nanovial's compatibility with leading single-cell sequencing platforms, developing turnkey analysis software, and generating large-scale, interaction-resolved datasets creates new opportunities for Partillion's commercial growth.