Salt Lake City, Utah, November 4, 2024
Paterna Biosciences, a Salt Lake City-based biotechnology company focused on male fertility, announced on October 28, 2024, that it has secured a $6.4 million seed round. Springtide Ventures led the funding. Utah Innovation Fund also participated in the round.
The funds will support the company’s R&D, including setting up machinery to kick off a phase zero study in early 2025 and a second-stage clinical trial in the future.
Dr. Alexander Patuszak, along with his other co-founders, are male reproductive urologists who are actively working with Bradley Cairns, one of the world’s leading experts in chromatin and sperm biology, a professor and researcher at the University of Utah, to improve fertility treatments in men.
Dr. Patuszak said, “There have been very few and very limited efficacy treatment options for men and their fertility problems. Typically, when I see a man in a clinic with fertility problems, there are only two things I can offer him: medicine, which has literally a flip-of-a-coin chance, fifty-fifty, of helping him solve his problem or surgery. That is it. In the context of where we are technologically, we should be doing much better. So we asked the question, ‘Can we do better’?”
“Over the last six or seven years, we laid the foundation for this by understanding at a molecular level what spermatogenesis looks like. We dissected the ‘programming’ for turning the stem cell into a sperm cell. Over the last two years, we have turned this knowledge into a company called Paterna Biosciences. Now, we have reached the milestone of generating gametes that have completed all the cellular processes of DNA, intermixing, dividing, and maturing so that they can be used for fertilization.”
“They are one step away from looking like a sperm cell,” Dr. Patuszak continued.
“We are probably a few months away; to be perfectly candid, this is just part of the R and D process. We are starting talks with the FDA and setting up the clinical development process for our clinical trials. The University of Utah faculty is also collaborating with us, and we do a tremendous amount of work with them as both my co-founders and I are faculty there.
In the near future, Dr. Patuszak plans to “run two studies; one is what we call a phase zero study in which we test the ability of our gametes to fertilize human eggs in vitro. We are looking to kick off that one in early 2025. The second would be our pivotal clinical trial, which will be in vitro fertilization using our gametes and then transferring those embryos identically to the IVF process.”
Such a process would solve the big issue highlighted by Pautszak, which is that, currently, the selection of male gametes is very subjective and done by an embryologist sitting under a microscope. Due to this human factor, about 50% of all IVF cycles fail.
“Where we have an advantage is that we are looking at the entire process, start to finish, and we can do an extensive array of testing on those gametes to exclude those with genetic defects that could impact fertilization, essentially pre-qualifying these cells before we ever hand them off to the IVF clinic. Our internal slogan is we create gametes that we can stand behind. I want to be able to look my patients in the eye and tell them I can help,” exclaimed Dr. Patuszak.
Dr. Patuszak has worked closely with Springtide Ventures, a key investor and supporter of biotechnology and healthcare innovation. Known for previous investment in companies like PathologyWatch, Tava Health, and Tula Health, Springtide backs groundbreaking advances that improve patient care. Additionally, the Utah Innovation Fund, a state-sponsored agency with a mission to support and fund promising startups, also contributed to the funds raised by Paterna Biosciences.
See previous TechBuzz coverage of the origin and mission of Utah Innovation Fund.
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