Stemgent, a startup in Cambridge, MA, and San Diego that makes consumable materials for stem cell research labs, has raised $14 million in venture capital, according to PE Hub.
The company’s backers include HealthCare Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures, according to PE Hub. CEO Ian Ratcliffe didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment about the deal.
Stemgent aims to sell proprietary reagents and tools for stem cell researchers, according to its website. The company has assembled an all-star roster of supporters on its scientific advisory board, including MIT’s Bob Langer, Bob Weinberg, and Rudolf Jaenisch; Harvard University’s Douglas Melton; Harvard Medical School’s Leonard Zon; and Sheng Ding of the Scripps Research Institute.
Stemgent’s financing was certainly well-timed, coinciding today with President Obama’s decision to lift federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research enacted in 2001 by the Bush Administration. Those rules limited researchers receiving federal research dollars to working on a small number of existing stem cell lines.
Ratcliffe joined Stemgent with a background in the business of selling consumable reagents to biologists. He worked previously as president of Upstate Group, which was acquired by Atlanta-based Serologicals for $205 million in 2004, according to this story last year in Mass High Tech.
