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Portal Biotechnologies
Portal Biotechnologies is a Watertown, Massachusetts cell-engineering platform company building tools that push complex cargo - mRNA, siRNA, CRISPR complexes, proteins - into living cells by squeezing them through microscopic holes in a silicon surface, rather than relying on viruses or chemistry. Founded in 2023 by Armon Sharei, the MIT-trained scientist behind SQZ Biotechnologies, Portal sells hardware and consumables to drug discovery and cell therapy labs instead of developing its own drugs. Its instruments are used across more than 100 customer sites, including many of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, and the company has raised seed and follow-on funding plus a DARPA contract for portable, point-of-care cell manufacturing.
Armon Sharei
Armon Sharei is the founder and CEO of Portal Biotechnologies, a cell-engineering platform company in Watertown, Massachusetts that builds devices to push genetic and molecular cargo into living cells without killing them. He earned a chemical engineering PhD at MIT, where he invented the membrane-squeezing CellSqueeze technique, then founded SQZ Biotechnologies, raised more than $300M, struck a billion-dollar Roche partnership, and took the company public on the NYSE in 2020 before being ousted and watching it liquidate in 2024. After a sabbatical spent drawing comics about immune cells, he returned with Portal, choosing this time to sell tools rather than develop drugs, and has built a network of 100+ customers including most of the top 10 global pharma companies plus an $8M DARPA contract.