Partillion Bioscience Secures $2.1 Million NIH SBIR Grant to Advance Large-Scale Cell-Cell Interaction Sequencing

Tenth SBIR award brings Partillion's total non-dilutive federal funding to more than $8 million and supports development of Cell-Cell-seq workflows

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Partillion Bioscience announced a two-year, $2.1 million NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to expand the company's Cell-Cell-seq workflows. Partillion's 10th SBIR grant brings the company's total non-dilutive federal funding to more than $8 million, roughly matching private investment to date, with no additional equity exchanged.

Closing a Critical Gap in Single-Cell Analysis

Most single-cell sequencing workflows profile cells in isolation, limiting researchers' ability to study how cellular interactions shape disease and therapeutic response. Competitively awarded through NIH's Direct-to-Phase II mechanism, the grant will advance Cell-Cell-seq, a workflow built on Partillion's proprietary Nanovial technology (protected by 17 issued patents) that preserves defined cell pairs, captures functional outputs such as secretion, activation, and killing, and links them to sequencing data. The award will let Partillion scale Cell-Cell-seq toward datasets of up to one million cell pairs, work that includes 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. "It allows us to pursue ambitious scientific work while keeping our private capital focused on customer adoption and commercial expansion."

Existing Momentum, Emerging Opportunities

Partillion launched a distribution partnership with Sony Biotechnology in 2024. Its Nanovial platform also played a key role in a research collaboration with UCLA, USC, and Caltech, supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The award adds to that momentum, putting Cell-Cell-seq into more hands across research and industry.

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

About Partillion Bioscience

Partillion Bioscience is pioneering a functional cell analysis platform built on its award-winning Nanovial technology. The company enables pharmaceutical and biotech partners to accelerate therapeutic development by screening millions of live cells in parallel and capturing critical functional outputs such as secretion, signaling, and viability.

Partillion's technology has been featured in Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Nature Protocols, PNAS, Science Advances, and ACS Nano, and recognized with the 2020 SLAS Innovation Award, 2022 SLAS New Product Award, and 2025 CYTO Innovation & Technology Showcase Award.

Learn more at www.partillion.com or contact [email protected].

NIH Funding Acknowledgment

The project described in this press release is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44GM165220. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

SOURCE Partillion Bioscience