HTGF has returned to back Freiburg's single cell-dispensing spinout Cytena after previously featuring in the company’s $1.3m round in 2015.

Cytena, a Germany-based single-cell printing technology spinout from University of Freiburg, has closed a €3m ($3.4m) series A round featuring public-private partnership High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and two unnamed angel investors. Founded in 2014, Cytena markets a range of lab machines that dispense and sort live biological cells to be used in biopharmaceutical drug development as well as cancer and stem cell research applications. Cytena’s devices quickly isolate each individual cell in well plates with enough capacity for 96 or 384 specimens. The technique, known as single-cell printing, could serve in a number of drug development and biological research settings. The series A cash will support further product development and the expansion of Cytena’s sales operations, as the spinout aims to build market share and accrue enough capacity to rapidly adjust its technology for additional uses. Andre Gross, chief technology officer of Cytena, previously led research into cell-dispensing technologies at University of Freiberg’s Department of Microsystems Engineering. Cytena had already raised $1.3m in a HTGF-led round in 2015 backed by a consortium of unnamed private investors. Benjamin Steimle, chief financial officer of Cytena, said: “The technological advantage of our single-cell printers over competing products does not mean that we can rest on our laurels. “Rather, our goal is to better understand and serve our customers’ needs. The new capital creates an important basis for doing so.”

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