Driven by a mission to develop regenerative medicines for intractable diseases, BlueRock Therapeutics is advancing a novel Cell+Gene platform to develop, manufacture and deliver native cell and engineered cell therapies. By restoring lost function, these regenerative medicines have the potential to meaningfully alter the treatment paradigm for patients.
BlueRock was founded in 2016 when Versant Ventures, a top-tier venture capital firm, and global pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG provided $225 million in one of the largest-ever Series A financings in biotech history. These investors backed BlueRock’s scientific founders and management with world-leading cell bioprocessing, translational, and manufacturing expertise. With access to numerous cell types that can restore function and express therapeutic payload, BlueRock’s platform has broad therapeutic application across many disease areas.
Founded by the world’s leading experts in regenerative cell therapy, and led by management and investors with strong track records of success, BlueRock is well-positioned to execute on its mission.
Advancing a novel Cell+Gene platform.
The Need
Millions of people suffer from degenerative diseases that are intractable to current therapeutic approaches. Despite significant advancements in medical management, currently available treatment options cannot adequately replicate the natural functions performed by native human cells.
BlueRock is harnessing the power of engineered native cell therapies to develop new medicines across three therapeutic areas: Neurology, Cardiology, and Autoimmunity.
BlueRock’s Neurology pipeline is highlighted by a first-in-class cell therapy to restore dopaminergic neurons and function in Parkinson’s Disease. Our neurology pipeline is also focused on engineering microglia across additional neurological disorders. In Cardiology, BlueRock’s lead program is a cell therapy for Heart Failure that will use a highly specific and pure population of cardiomyocytes to re-muscularize patients’ hearts. Finally, BlueRock is leveraging the expertise of its founders and investigative partners to design and engineer high-potential Macrophage cells for Autoimmune diseases.
Developing regenerative medicines for intractable diseases.
Our Approach
BlueRock’s foundational science re-capitulates the cell’s developmental biology, research pursued by its scientific founders for more than 20 years. The company applies this scientific expertise by directing the cell differentiation of universal, pluripotent stem cells. Because pluripotent stem cells can expand indefinitely and develop into numerous cell types, BlueRock can efficiently develop broad ranges of universal, allogeneic cell therapies. Core to BlueRock’s distinctive technology is the ability to create cell therapies with high purity, potency, and specificity.
BlueRock can further engineer cells ex vivo using its advanced process development capabilities. Ex vivo engineering enables cells to produce enzymes, antibodies and other proteins for additional therapeutic benefit. These engineered cells act in situ as a “hyperlocal” manufacturing site, producing therapeutic proteins in the disease neighborhood. This approach addresses the fundamental manufacturing and delivery challenges for large molecule therapeutics.
Convergence of Cell + Gene technologies creates fundamentally new ways to impact disease.
Manufacturing
The potential of cell therapy for regenerative medicines has been recognized for decades. However, the complexity of manufacturing cells that are suitable for use in patients at clinical scale has hindered development — until now. Using the latest in molecular biology technologies and manufacturing approaches, BlueRock is able to overcome prior hurdles.
BlueRock’s cell therapy candidates start with pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), which have inherently unique benefits over mature adult cells. Namely, PSCs can expand indefinitely and, when exposed to proprietary biological differentiation methods, can develop into a broad range of highly specific, high purity cell types.
Furthermore, BlueRock has assembled an internal team of industry-leading cell scientists and process development engineers who have developed methods to scale our bioprocess and manufacturing capabilities. These experts have access to state-of-the-art cell-manufacturing facilities through strategic partnerships with leading academic and medical organizations, and are able to manufacture clinical-grade cell therapies to supply our early clinical programs.
Finally, BlueRock has broken ground on an internal facility that will enable rapid scale up of cell bioprocesses for clinical evaluation.
Our internal team of leading cell scientists and process development engineers ensure that we are creating clinical-grade cells for our programs.
Contact Us
Over the next 12 months, BlueRock will be significantly expanding staff at all locations. Contact us to learn about our rewarding career opportunities in New York, Boston/Cambridge, and Toronto.
Toronto, ON
BlueRock Toronto
MaRS Discovery District
101 College Street, East Tower, 15-701 Toronto, ON
M5G 1L7, Canada
New York, NY
BlueRock New York
Alexandria Center for Life Science
450 E 29th Street, Suite 504
New York, NY 10016, USA
Cambridge, MA
BlueRock Corporate Headquarters
1 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02142, USA