Unlocking Filamentous Systems
Bringing ultra-high-throughput screening (uHTS) to the most complex bio-based products.
SCALE
106x
More mutants screened
Our workflows significantly increases the chances of finding better strains.
SPEED
‘10x‘
Faster Development
We compress multi-year R&D timelines into months.
EFFICIENCY
‘116x‘
Yield Improvement
Validated during platform development.
FINANCIAL
‘30%‘
Projected COGS Reduction
Techno-economic modeling indicates our approach targets massive structural cost savings.
Hospitals ration chemotherapy.
Factories shut down.
Patients wait.
The Market Need
This isn’t a supply chain problem — it’s a chemistry problem.
The molecules that save lives are too structurally complex to make cheaply or reliably using semi-synthesis. These traditional multi-step processes are slow, fragile, heavily polluting, and locked into geographic dependencies that break under pressure.
The result: recurring global shortages of essential medicines, high and rising manufacturing costs, and a pharmaceutical industry increasingly exposed to single points of failure.
Nobody has fundamentally solved this. Until now.
Our Platform
We achieved what others couldn’t.
Where others optimize the process, we optimize the organism. By screening millions of mutants at speed, we find the strains that produce more, hold up better, and make complex API manufacturing genuinely profitable.
Your process stays the same. Your margins don’t.
Mastering Filamentous Systems
While conventional platforms rely on simple bacteria, our proprietary cell-sorting and bioinformatics workflows are designed specifically to engineer notoriously difficult filamentous microbes, unlocking their vast biosynthetic potential.
Engineering Entire Gene Clusters
We move beyond single-protein expression. Our platform is optimized for complex bio-based products, rationally engineering entire biosynthetic gene clusters to produce highly sophisticated APIs at scale.
Faster Timelines & Massive Yields
By leveraging ultra-high-throughput automation, we radically compress development cycles. Our precision approach directly translates to production scale — we’ve achieved an 11,500% yield improvement during platform validation for a specific active pharmaceutical ingredient.
The biology is ready. Are you?
Science & Intellectual Property
The Moat
Metacell’s technology originates from rigorous academic research conducted at the University of Turku, Finland — one of the Nordic’s leading centers for natural product biosynthesis.
Our seasoned leadership team has spent years de-risking the core science, securing approximately €1.5M in prior funding and grants before seeking external investment. The result is a platform validated to TRL 6, with proprietary strain-engineering methods that form a defensible IP position.
Engineering gene clusters in filamentous microbes is a known industry bottleneck. Our platform solves it. That’s the moat.
Our Team
Metacell was founded on a single goal: secure the supply of life-saving medicines.
Our team has spent years dismantling the bottlenecks in biomanufacturing — engineering proprietary microbial cell factories that make complex API production faster, cleaner, and radically more profitable.
Keith Yamada, PhD
Interim CEO & Board Chair
Dr. Yamada leads Metacell’s commercial strategy and partnerships, translating the platform’s scientific foundations into real-world manufacturing value for complex API producers. With a background spanning life technologies and bioinformatics, he has steered Metacell from a university spin-out into a commercially validated enterprise; driving the relationships and decisions that turn deep science into market opportunity.
Benjamin Nji Wandi, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Nji Wandi built the platform. As the technical architect behind Metacell’s proprietary strain development capabilities, he designed and executed the ultra-high-throughput screening workflows that make filamentous systems commercially viable at speed; delivering a TRL 6-validated platform and a 116x yield improvement that proves the science works at scale.
Kristiina Ylihonko, PhD
Business Advisor
Dr. Ylihonko brings what most deep-tech companies spend years trying to build — direct access to pharmaceutical decision-makers and a proven track record of commercialising science in the industry Metacell serves. Her strategic guidance accelerates the path from validated platform to signed partnership.
Prof. Mikko Metsä-Ketelä
Scientific Advisor
The science behind Metacell begins with Professor Metsä-Ketelä. His decades of research into natural product biosynthesis at the University of Turku established the foundational discoveries the platform is built upon; his continued involvement ensures Metacell remains at the frontier of what filamentous systems can do.
For Partners & Investors
Better biology. Better margins. Same process.
For Pharma
Your fermentation process works. We make it significantly more profitable. Metacell screens millions of mutants to find the highest-yielding, most stable strains for your molecule — no process changes required.
For Investors
Behind every profitable fermentation process is a better strain. Metacell builds them — and the IP that comes with them. A validated platform, a large market, and an early entry point.
Contact us
Our labs are in Turku, Finland — the heart of the Finnish pharmaceutical cluster. Finland is also, for the eighth consecutive year, the happiest country in the world. We can’t promise that’s a coincidence.
Ready to improve your fermentation economics?
Talk to us about your program, your molecule, or your investment thesis. We’re easy to find in Turku — and easier to talk to than you’d think.
