CellsBin Builds Rare-Cell Intelligence for Precision Medicine

CellsBin is building an observational layer for medicine around a stubborn fact: some of the cells that matter most are the hardest to see. The Branford, Connecticut biotechnology company combines photonics, microfluidics, single-cell analysis, and artificial intelligence to detect, characterize, and monitor rare cells.

CEO Ali Kabiri, PhD, and CTO Nima Sarshar, PhD, lead a team spanning technology, medical science, translational partnerships, regulation, biochip research, software, and a CLIA laboratory. The company is initially focused on therapeutic-cell monitoring and multiple myeloma, where rare populations can carry information about treatment persistence, disease burden, and biological change.

CellsBin closed a Series A led by 108 BioCapital on September 22, 2026. The financing is intended to accelerate commercial adoption, strategic partnerships, product development, clinical evidence, and team growth. The amount and valuation were not disclosed.

About CellsBin

CellsBin describes its mission as making rare cells visible, measurable, and useful for precision medicine. Its premise is that conventional tools often force researchers to choose between sensitivity and biological context. A molecular test may detect a faint signal without showing what an individual living cell is doing. Flow cytometry can preserve phenotype but lose confidence as the target population thins.

CellsBin is trying to keep both. Its platform is designed to find low-abundance cells while retaining single-cell information about identity, function, activation, exhaustion, viability, and other states. That combination matters in cell and gene therapy because engineered cells can remain biologically important after routine methods stop detecting them reliably.

Polaris Connects the Instrument, Assay, and Data

Polaris is the integrated platform beneath CellsBin's products. The company describes a stack that joins photonics, microfluidics, automation, AI analytics, assays, and secure cloud infrastructure. Scout and Insight are the first applications, while new rare-cell assays remain in development.

The platform model matters because rare-cell biology is not one measurement. A useful workflow has to capture the cell, preserve it, image or profile it, interpret the data, and return a result that can be compared across time. Owning more of that stack could help CellsBin standardize the workflow and build longitudinal datasets. It also gives the company a larger execution burden across hardware, lab operations, software, quality, and evidence generation.

Scout Tracks Therapeutic Cells Over Time

Scout is CellsBin's therapeutic-cell monitoring product. The current company specification reports sensitivity near one cell per million, more than 30 surface and intracellular markers, approximately 2 mL of blood input, and a 48-hour reporting target. It is positioned for work from preclinical and IND-enabling studies through early clinical development and long-term follow-up.

CellsBin has presented early analytical evidence for that thesis. A blinded ASCO 2026 study using spiked samples reported a CB-Scout limit of detection near 0.61 cells per million, versus roughly 30 per million for spectral flow cytometry. A separate five-patient retrospective study reported rare CAR-T cells at later time points after spectral flow no longer detected them.

Those are conference abstracts, not broad clinical validation. The evidence supports analytical sensitivity and a reason to study the platform further. It does not yet prove that CellsBin's measurements improve decisions or outcomes across programs.

Insight Extends the Platform Into Multiple Myeloma

Insight applies the platform to rare circulating malignant plasma cells in multiple myeloma. CellsBin reports analytical sensitivity near 10 cells per milliliter, approximately 2 mL of blood input, and viable-cell recovery up to about 94%. The product page clearly labels Insight for research use only and not for diagnostic procedures.

The clinical problem is easy to understand. Bone-marrow biopsies are invasive and sample one location at one moment. A repeatable blood workflow could offer a more convenient way to study disease burden over time. CellsBin still has to prove how well its blood-based measurements correspond to marrow biology and whether the information changes care.

Leadership and the Team CellsBin Is Building

The current leadership and team page reflects the range required to commercialize a precision-medicine platform. Kabiri and Sarshar are joined by Director of Technology Rebecca MacLeod, PhD; Joel Eisner, PhD in Medical & Scientific Affairs; Sajad Salehi, PhD as Medical Director of the CLIA lab; Joanna Pawlak, PhD as Translational Partnership Lead; and specialists in partnerships, regulation, biochip R&D, and software.

Hiring is an operating signal here, not a lifestyle pitch. CellsBin said its Series A would support commercial, scientific, and technical growth. Yale's Office of Career Strategy recently published CellsBin internships in scientific writing and strategic outreach. Those roles suggest the company is building the connective tissue required to turn research into publications, partnerships, customers, and evidence.

Why CellsBin Matters Now

Cell therapy has created a monitoring problem that grows as the treatment succeeds or changes. The therapeutic population can become extremely rare, yet persistence and phenotype may still matter. CellsBin is betting that precision medicine needs an observational layer built for that low-abundance biology.

The Series A led by 108 BioCapital gives the company capital to test that thesis outside a narrow technical demonstration. The next evidence will come from repeatability across programs, partner adoption, stronger clinical datasets, and proof that rare-cell measurements change real development decisions.

If CellsBin can make that handoff, its advantage will not be one sensitivity number. It will be the integrated system that keeps cells visible, their biology interpretable, and the results useful after conventional instruments lose the signal.