Los Angeles – September 15, 2026 -- Partillion Bioscience has secured a two-year, $2.1 million NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to scale its Cell-Cell-seq technology toward datasets of up to one million cell pairs. The grant, awarded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) under Award Number R44GM165220, is Partillion's 10th SBIR grant and brings the company's total non-dilutive federal funding past $8 million, roughly matching its private investment to date without additional equity dilution.
NIH funding targets a gap in single-cell analysis
Most single-cell sequencing methods profile cells in isolation, limiting insight into how cellular interactions drive disease progression and therapeutic response. Cell-Cell-seq, built on Partillion's Nanovial technology protected by 17 issued patents, preserves defined cell pairs and captures functional outputs such as secretion, activation, and killing, linking them directly to sequencing data.
Grant funds platform expansion and new analysis tools
The award, competitively secured through NIH's Direct-to-Phase II mechanism, will fund broader compatibility with additional sequencing platforms and the development of new analysis tools. Joseph de Rutte, PhD, Co-Founder and CEO of Partillion Bioscience, said the funding lets the company pursue ambitious scientific work while keeping private capital focused on customer adoption and commercial expansion.
Partnerships with Sony and academic institutions build commercial momentum
Partillion launched a distribution partnership with Sony Corporation 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 platform compatibility and generating large-scale, interaction-resolved datasets create new opportunities for commercial growth.