Ronawk Inc.’s new $1.89 million seed round opens the door to more possibilities.
“This funding helps propel us forward. It extends our runway,” co-founder and CEO A.J. Mellott said.
With the funding, the Olathe-based life sciences startup added six more employees who filled scientist and lab operations roles. It brings the headcount to 10.
“First and foremost, the biggest win for the company has been the growth of the team,” Ronawk COO Tom Jantsch said.
Having a bigger team gives Ronawk the capacity to pursue more pilot projects with biotech organizations. And those projects deliver invaluable insights that can help Ronawk refine its product and its messaging to resonate with the market, Jantsch said.
The additional employees also enable Ronawk to take a deeper dive with testing its Bio-Block platform using specific cell lines, including ones that have risen in popularity in the scientific realm.
Instead of the standard hard plastic Petri dish, scientists can use the Bio-Block platform to grow cells in a contoured 3D format that better mimics how cells would grow inside a human body. When cells need more room to grow, scientists can simply add more Bio-Blocks, which connect to one another like Legos.
“We can tailor different characteristics of Bio-Blocks to mimic different tissues, so it’s a more native-like environment,” Mellott said.
Creating a more realistic environment also gives scientists a truer picture of how a new treatment might work inside a human. Ronawk’s offering also conserves resources.
“Now scientists can grow millions to billions of cells very easily from one culture,” Mellott said. “They can attempt some really fascinating experiments that before would have taken a huge amount of labor, a lot of consumables and an enormous amount of media. And it possibly would have been cost prohibitive or logistically prohibitive.”
Ultimately, Jantsch said, Ronawk’s product line has the potential to accelerate research for next-generation therapies.
