Unlocking Filamentous Systems
Bringing ultra-high-throughput screening (uHTS) to the most complex bio-based products.
sCALE
106x
More mutants screened
Our workflows successfully increases the chances of finding better strains.
SPEED
‘10x‘
Faster Development
We compress multi-year R&D timelines into months.
Efficiency
‘115x‘
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, having successfully achieved an 11,500% yield improvement during platform validation for a specific active pharmaceutical ingredient.
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 unified vision: to secure and optimize the supply of life-saving treatments. Rooted in deep academic research, our leadership has spent years dismantling the limitations of traditional biomanufacturing. By engineering proprietary microbial cell factories, we resolve long-standing bottlenecks in the production of complex APIs. We believe the future of essential medicine relies on biology, not just chemistry. By transitioning away from older, highly polluting semi-synthetic methods, Metacell is commercializing biocatalytic technologies that are environmentally sustainable, radically more efficient, and dedicated to bringing critical medicines to market at scale.
Keith Yamada, PhD
Interim CEO & Board Chair
Dr. Yamada bridges the critical gap between academic discovery and industrial-scale biomanufacturing. Drawing on his advanced background in life technologies and bioinformatics, he has spearheaded Metacell’s transition from a university spin-out into a commercially viable enterprise. He drives the company’s strategic partnerships and commercialization efforts, successfully translating foundational metabolic engineering research into a validated platform capable of exponential yield improvements for complex APIs.
Benjamin Nji Wandi, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Wandi is the technical architect behind Metacell’s proprietary strain development capabilities. He leads the execution of the company’s ultra-high-throughput screening and synthetic biology workflows, specifically optimizing them for notoriously difficult filamentous systems. His technical leadership has successfully transformed complex metabolic engineering theories into a robust, TRL 6-validated platform that compresses multi-year R&D timelines into a matter of months.
Kristiina Ylihonko, PhD
Business Advisor
A serial entrepreneur and CEO in pharma. Her extensive network and industry expertise provide Metacell with an unparalleled speed-to-market advantage.
Prof. Mikko Metsä-Ketelä
Scientific Advisor
The visionary scientific founder behind the platform. His decades of rigorous academic research established the core foundational science that Metacell is built upon.
For Partners & Investors
Better biology. Better margins.
For Pharma
Traditional multi-step semi-synthesis of complex APIs is fragile and expensive. By mastering filamentous host systems, we provide a fully biosynthetic, single-fermentation alternative that shrinks development timelines, lowers the cost of goods, and secures your supply chain.
For Investors
Metacell targets a large, established market with a distinct technical moat. Engineering gene clusters in filamentous microbes is a known industry bottleneck; our validated platform solves this, offering immense scalability across a broad spectrum of high-value, fermentation-derived bio-based products.
What are you waiting for?
Ready to take the next step? Let’s bring your vision to life! Explore our services and products and get in touch today for a consultation. Together, we’ll make it happen.
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.
