In just a decade, the company based in Bizkaia has completed the development of a varied catalog of health products and cell therapy drugs in the field of regenerative medicine and has managed to register more than 30 international patents

In just over a decade, Histocell (www.histocell.com) has gone from being an initiative of a research group of the UPV-EHU Faculty of Medicine to becoming a rapidly expanding biopharmaceutical company that already has more than 30 registered international patents.

The year 2006 was an important turning point in the history of the company, since the business group Noray Biosciences Group, aware of the Histocell project’s potential since it was in the Biokabi incubator, acquired the majority of the capital of the company. They committed to maintain the initial work team and promoted the development of two large product lines in the field of regenerative medicine: cell therapy drugs and health products and active ingredients.

Clear commitment to Bizkaia

Histocell’s laboratories, in which a team of 30 people work, are located in the Technology Park of Bizkaia and have three units for the production of human cells for clinical use.

Although Histocell’s activity is focused on the international market, its managers are interested in the Basque Country to continue hosting its main areas in the future. “We aspire to maintain the research, development, registration and manufacture of products here”, says its CEO, Julio Font. Nowadays, Histocell manufactures in its laboratories the medicines of the cell therapy line; but, to maintain all its production in the Basque Country, it should also produce its sanitary products. In this sense, Julio Font advances that they have a project “at a very advanced stage” to build a small factory in Bizkaia to produce them.

The purpose of Histocell’s managers is to start building it soon. “We are at the right time to do so because we have already signed the first sales agreements and our products already have customers in different countries. We will start by carrying out a project that suits our initial needs, without getting involved in pharaonic works”, says Font. “The ultimate goal”, he continues, “is to maintain control over manufacturing, because our ‘know-how’ is in the development and manufacture of the product”.

The great challenge of financing

Since 2006, the company has raised nine million euros through shares subscribed by both institutional investors and private investors who are committed to the health sector. Histocell has also had the backing of important corporate partners such as Ferrer, Salvat and IFC, three leading European pharmaceutical companies. In addition, it has obtained non-dilutive public and private financing for a total of 6 million euros. Since the financing round carried out in 2015, Seed Capital Bizkaia is also shareholder of Histocell.

The CEO of Histocell emphasizes that, at this time, after having managed to overcome the challenges of product development and registration, the company is immersed in the “great battle” of financing. “I think that if we want to have a powerful biosciences sector in the Basque Country, we really need a financial instrument that will accompany us a little more”, he highlights. “Our great challenge – he points out – is financing because, until we reach the sale phase, we need to finance ourselves for more than ten years. We have shareholders who have understood it, such as Seed Capital itself, and who are supporting us, but it is true that there is a lack of a public-private financial instrument that supports very capital-intensive companies, such as the biosciences sector”.

Reinvestment in research

Font is optimistic about the future of the company if it can secure its financing. “Right now”, he points out, “we have all the projects active and we are working hard to overcome the challenges of financing, clinical development and manufacturing of medical devices. If all this goes well, we will reinvest more in research and products and will close the cycle. We are proud of what we have done in these ten years, where we have come, and we believe a lot in our products, we have confidence in what we have done. Now we are subjecting them to the evaluation of international pharmaceutical companies and they are being very well considered; in that sense, Histocell, if it continues on the path it is going and can be well financed, it will be really a company that will have guaranteed success”.