# Zafrens

> Zafrens is a San Diego biotechnology company building an ultra-high-throughput single-cell platform that isolates, images, runs assays on, and sequences millions of individual cells per day. Its Z-Screen technology swaps the conventional 96-well plate for a credit-card-sized plastic chip holding 50,000 to 200,000 microwells, each with integrated imaging and multi-omic sequencing. By linking perturbation to genotype, phenotype and function at single-cell resolution, Zafrens compresses multiple stages of drug discovery into a single benchtop experiment - a 500x to 2,000x jump in the number of experiments a scientist can run at one timepoint.

- **Founded:** 2021
- **Headquarters:** San Diego, California, United States
- **Founders:** Swamy Vijayan (Founder & CEO), Yi Zhang (Co-Founder)
- **Team size:** 29 employees (2026)
- **Products:** Z-Screen, Active-Seq, Active-Drug-Seq
- **Notable:** Exited stealth with $23M in financing; total funding reached $31M after the 2025 Series A extension., Developed a credit-card-sized plastic chip with 50,000-200,000 microwells integrating imaging and sequencing., Delivered a claimed 500x to 2,000x increase in experiments per scientist at a single timepoint.

## Products & services

- **Z-Screen** — A benchtop, microfluidic chip-based platform that replaces the conventional 96-well plate with a 50,000 to 200,000 microwell format on a credit-card-sized plastic chip. Each well integrates imaging and mRNA sequencing, so every imaged cell can be sequenced simultaneously - enabling millions of experiments per day via nanofabrication rather than robotics.
- **Active-Seq** — Technology for mapping the molecular states of cells to their functional manifestation, linking perturbation to genotype and phenotype.
- **Active-Drug-Seq** — Simultaneous phenotypic and molecular high-throughput screening, analyzing therapeutic assets across efficacy, safety, and mechanism of action.

## Achievements

- Exited stealth with $23M in financing; total funding reached $31M after the 2025 Series A extension.
- Developed a credit-card-sized plastic chip with 50,000-200,000 microwells integrating imaging and sequencing.
- Delivered a claimed 500x to 2,000x increase in experiments per scientist at a single timepoint.
- Founder Swamy Vijayan previously built Omniome (acquired by Pacific Biosciences for up to $800M) and Plexium.

## Latest updates

- **2025-02** — Closed a Series A extension led by new investor imec.xpand, bringing total funding to $31M to scale the platform and add global pharma partnerships.
- **2024** — Exited stealth with $23M in financing led by Prime Movers Lab to advance multiple stages of drug discovery in a single experiment.

## Links

- Website: https://zafrens.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/zafrens
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Zafrensbio

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/zafrens
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-10