NC-XILIS
8.7.2021 14:02:05 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Xilis, Inc., a pioneering company using its MicroOrganoSphere (MOS) technology to guide precision therapy for cancer patients and accelerate drug discovery and development, today announced the close of a $70 million Series A financing. The round was led by Mubadala Capital, joined by new investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures), LSP (one of Europe’s largest healthcare investment firms), Catalio Capital Management, and Duke Angel Network. Current investors Felicis Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Pear VC, KdT Ventures, and Alix Ventures also participated.
Founded in 2019 by Dr. Xiling Shen, Dr. David Hsu, and Dr. Hans Clevers, Xilis is based on decades of biomedical, oncology, and stem cell research by its three co-founders. Dr. Clevers, a Breakthrough Prize winner, is the inventor and pioneer of the organoid technology. Dr. Shen and Dr. Hsu are accomplished engineering and medical professors at Duke University and experts in precision medicine. They have developed the scalable MOS technology to analyze patients’ own tumors in their native microenvironment – a breakthrough achievement.
“Our vision is to transform cancer care in diagnostics and reshape drug development by providing a technology for rapid therapeutic profiling,” said Xiling Shen, PhD, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xilis. “The support provided by these world-class investors is an important milestone for our journey to transform cancer care and dramatically improve patient survival by enabling personalized precision oncology and bringing transformative medicines to patients faster and with higher success rates,” added Dr. Shen.
Hans Clevers, MD, PhD, Scientific Co-Founder, venture partner at LSP and Principal Investigator at the Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands, stated, “Since my lab invented organoids a dozen years ago, we provided proof-of-concept for many applications, yet the technology remained slow, complex, and expensive. Together with LSP, I have been looking for enabling technology to unlock the full potential, and Dr. Shen and Dr. Hsu’s invention of the MOS technology has torn down those hurdles and will accelerate its use both in the clinic and for drug discovery and development.”
Xilis’ MOS has been proven to have broad applications:
- Leveraging MOS and AI-driven algorithms, Xilis is developing its Precision Oncology Platform to accurately predict therapeutic responses to help clinicians prioritize cancer treatment strategies for each patient. The entire process from patient biopsy to results takes less than two weeks, enabling extensive clinical application.
- The MOS technology enables high-fidelity pharmaceutical drug discovery and development. Drug developers can use this versatile platform at multiple stages of R&D, including early discovery, preclinical toxicity and efficacy, bioanalytical testing, and clinical trials.
- MOS is a revolutionary technology for immunotherapy development, which requires the patient’s immune microenvironment.
Proceeds from the Series A funding will further advance Xilis’ proprietary MOS technology, expand its AI-driven capabilities, fund clinical studies for diagnostic development, and validate the use of MOS technology with biopharma partners.
“There is a critical need for technologies that can help clinicians determine the most optimal therapy for their individual patients,” Mubadala Capital’s Ayman AlAbdallah added. “Patients will benefit greatly from Xilis’ precision medicine assays by avoiding time spent on treatment cycles that are ineffective, and instead, receive therapies with the greatest potential of success quickly and efficiently. The Xilis Precision Oncology Platform is a cost-effective, outcomes-driven advancement that will help reduce the global burden of oncology costs.”
“Genetic approaches to cancer diagnostics continue to be impactful, and Xilis is creating meaningful pathways for its Precision Oncology Platform to improve cancer care for a broader set of patients,” said GV Managing Partner Krishna Yeshwant, MD, MBA. “Xilis brings together experts in the fields of organoid development and precision medicine, and I’m excited to work with this impressive team as they continue to develop a breakthrough approach.”
About Xilis
Based in Durham, North Carolina, Xilis, Inc. is a biotechnology company developing a precision oncology platform that guides treatment decisions for oncologists to improve cancer care outcomes for patients and supports drug discovery and development for pharmaceutical companies. Xilis’ proprietary MicroOrganoSphere™ (MOS) technology consists of miniature patient tumors that capture the full microenvironment and heterogeneity and provides an automated and scalable solution. Using MOS and AI-driven algorithms, Xilis is developing a Xilis Response Score™ for the clinic, enabling oncologists to make informed and timely treatment decisions. Additionally, the MOS technology is speeding up development and clinical trials of cancer drugs by enabling analysis of authentic tumor microenvironments, high-throughput preclinical modeling, and clinical patient selection capabilities.
About Mubadala Capital
Mubadala Capital is the asset management arm of Mubadala Investment Company, a leading global sovereign investor headquartered in Abu Dhabi. In addition to managing its own balance sheet investments, Mubadala Capital manages third-party capital on behalf of institutional investors in four of its businesses, including three private equity funds, two early stage venture funds, a public fund and a fund in Brazil focused on special situations. The various businesses invest across the capital structure in both public and private securities.
To learn more about Xilis, visit our website at www.Xilis.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn .
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210708005283/en/
Link:
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
ClickHouse Expands Collaboration With Microsoft, Bringing Fabric Integration, Deeper OneLake Interoperability, and Enterprise Deployment Flexibility29.9.2026 09:30:00 CEST | Press release
ClickHouse, the company behind the open-source, real-time analytical database that has become the data layer for the AI era, today at The European Microsoft Fabric + SQL Community Conference announced a significant expansion of its strategic collaboration with Microsoft. The announcement encompasses four major milestones: the launch of the native ClickHouse workload for Microsoft Fabric, the general availability of OneLake read, the public preview of OneLake write, and the availability of ClickHouse Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) in the Microsoft Marketplace. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929947201/en/ ClickHouse expands collaboration with Microsoft This expansion builds on ClickHouse's growing presence within the Microsoft ecosystem, where data-intensive organizations rely on ClickHouse Cloud on Azure to power real-time observability, business intelligence, AI/ML pipelines, and analytical applications at sc
Opengear Expands Reach Through Pan-European Distribution Agreement with Ingram Micro29.9.2026 09:01:00 CEST | Press release
Opengear’s network resilience solutions now available across 20 European markets Opengear, a Digi International company (NASDAQ: DGII) and global leader in out-of-band management solutions, has signed its first pan-European distribution agreement with Ingram Micro, one of the world’s largest technology distributors. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929668925/en/ Opengear Expands Reach Through Pan-European Distribution Agreement with Ingram Micro The agreement will give resellers in participating Ingram Micro countries access to Opengear’s portfolio, supported by Ingram Micro's regional infrastructure, logistics capabilities and partner network. This expands Opengear’s existing reach in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, and brings its network resilience platform to resellers and end-users in additional European markets, such as Switzerland, Hungary, and Czech Republic. “T
Freemarket and Axiym launch LIQUI-DT™ – real-time business access to primary-market USD₮ from Tether29.9.2026 08:00:00 CEST | Press release
Freemarket and Axiym today launched a world-first service that gives businesses 24/7 real-time access to freshly minted, primary-market USD₮ issued by Tether. LIQUI-DTTM gives businesses compliant access to primary market stablecoins inside a fully regulated payment ecosystem via Freemarket’s global payment network. In audited trials, clients have minted or burned more than $300 million to date. Institutional users and high-volume traders will benefit from superior price certainty and direct liquidity giving them budgetary control. As the USD₮ is minted directly in the primary market, treasury and compliance teams have clear provenance for internal reporting 1. The LIQUI-DT service works because while no single party owns the whole stack, it is integrated into the Freemarket network. The combination of Freemarket’s compliant fiat rails and payment network, Axiym’s liquidity engine and on-chain settlement layer and Tether’s primary market issuance creates a regulated payments network wi
Estonia and Owkin Partner to Advance Sovereign AI in Biology29.9.2026 08:00:00 CEST | Press release
Estonia, led by the National Applied Research Center Metrosert, and Owkin today announced a collaboration to advance sovereign AI in biological and health research, working with Metrosert, Estonia’s state-owned applied research organisation. The collaboration will evaluate how K Pro, Owkin’s AI scientist platform, can help approved researchers work with complex Estonian health data inside secure national infrastructure, enabling reproducible analysis, and faster generation of scientific insight while preserving data sovereignty. The first phase will focus on selected Estonian health-data cohorts, with Owkin and Metrosert also exploring high-value research areas including oncology, where linked clinical, molecular, imaging and treatment-outcome data could support future biomedical research. Estonia has built one of the world’s most advanced digital public infrastructures and holds population-scale health and biomedical data assets. The partnership will explore how these foundations can
Jumio Completes Worldwide Rollout of selfie.DONE™, Bringing Privacy-Focused Reusable Identity to EMEA29.9.2026 07:00:00 CEST | Press release
Selfie-first onboarding eliminates unnecessary ID scans for trusted users, backed by the global Jumio Identity Graph, consent-based privacy and real-time compliance Jumio, the leading provider of AI-powered identity intelligence, today announced the expansion of its reusable identity solution, selfie.DONE, across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This launch marks the final phase of Jumio’s selfie.DONE rollout, following successful launches in Latin America, North America, and Asia-Pacific — making true reusable identity available worldwide wherever Jumio operates. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260928989719/en/ In regulated EMEA markets, organizations face the dual challenge of eliminating onboarding friction while adhering to stringent privacy standards and regulatory frameworks, including GDPR, PSD2, AMLD, and other evolving regulatory compliance requirements. selfie.DONE addresses this challenge with a
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom