“There’s a 15 Minute Window on a Certain Tuesday” | Why Your Biotech Can’t Get Funded | Stone & Wiklund

Edwin Stone is the CEO of Cellular Origins, a UK-based company building robotic manufacturing solutions for cell therapy. They closed their funding round in November 2024. His focus: automation that enables tech transfer, reduces cost of goods, and solves the labor problem in advanced therapy manufacturing.

Erik Digman Wiklund is the CEO of Circio Holding, a Norwegian biotech developing a next-generation circular RNA platform and AAV gene therapies with enhanced capsids and expression systems. After being told by VCs they were simultaneously “too early” and “too late,” they went public. Based in Sweden, where operating costs are one-third to one-half of the US.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• “There’s a 15 Minute Window on a Certain Tuesday”: The Absurd Reality of Biotech Funding
• Investors Move in Herds: In Vivo CAR-T Gets Everything
• “You Can’t Do Vaccines Right Now”: The Political Climate
• “Falling Between the Cracks”: Too Early, Then Too Late
• China Now Has the Majority of Cell and Gene Therapy Trials
• Platform vs Asset: Why Platforms Fell Out of Favor
• Cost of Phase 1 Has Gone Up 4x in Less Than 10 Years
• Big Pharma Feels Responsibility to Fund Out-of-Favor Tech
• Tech Transfer: The Hidden Manufacturing Problem
• Geographic Inequality: When Only Some Countries Get Access
• Europe Is Half the Cost of the US: The Capital Efficiency Argument
• What a Well-Funded Company Looks Like in 2028

Resources:

• Cellular Origins
• Circio Holding