Zafrens
San Diego, US · Founded 2021 · Delaware corporation · 30 employees on LinkedIn · 11 known investors
Zafrens develops a unified drug discovery platform that integrates isolation, imaging, and sequencing workflows to accelerate the identification of therapeutic compounds across modalities. The platform leverages AI and high-resolution data to compress timelines in drug development.
Founders & leadership
Zafrens was founded in 2021 by Martin Smrcina and Maina Ndungu.
Board
Investors · 11
Also in the syndicate · 2
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$6.2M disclosed across 1 of 3 rounds · 2021–2025
- Undisclosed amountSeries AFeb 2025 · 2 sources
imec.xpand (lead), Global Brain Corporation, Kofa Healthcare, Prime Movers Lab
Source ↗
▶$6.2MraisedJan 2022 · 9 investors · PharmaceuticalsRule 506(b)
- Kandaswamy VijayanExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $6.2M
- Amount sold
- $6.2M
- First sale
- Dec 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2021
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Zafrens is a San Diego, California based life sciences company that develops an ultra-high-throughput single-cell experimentation platform for drug discovery. Its core product, Z-Screen, replaces the conventional 96- to 1536-well plate format with a plate containing 50,000 to 200,000 nanoliter-scale wells and a built-in mRNA sequencer, so that every cell imaged in an assay can also be sequenced. The workflow takes two inputs — cells and beads — and returns paired longitudinal imaging and multi-omics data, linking perturbations to both phenotype and genotype at single-cell resolution.
The platform is described as agnostic to perturbation type, supporting chemical libraries as well as CRISPR, CAR-T and mRNA libraries. Stated application examples include compressed small-molecule discovery using reporter cells and drug-bead libraries with cell painting and whole-transcriptome readouts; HLA-independent TCR discovery from single CD8+ T cells with autologous APCs and peptide beads; bispecific antibody discovery in three-cell co-cultures with killing and cytokine readouts; and CAR-T intracellular-domain library profiling. Current company efforts are directed at small molecule drug discovery and T cell analysis, with exploratory work in antibody-epitope mapping, and the company states it also advances an internal pipeline.
Founding story
Zafrens was founded in 2021 by Swamy Vijayan, PhD, and Yi Zhang, with the aim of bridging biology, chemistry and engineering so that experiments at a scale previously affordable only to large pharmaceutical companies become accessible to individual researchers.
Business model
Zafrens develops life sciences products and platform capabilities around its single-cell isolate–image–sequence workflow, and states plans to strengthen partnerships with pharmaceutical firms worldwide.
Traction
Total capital raised reached $31 million as of the February 2025 Series A extension; investors include imec.xpand, Prime Movers Lab, Kofa Healthcare, Global Brain Corporation, Blueyard, Alix Ventures and FoundersX Ventures. Company efforts span small molecule discovery, T cell analysis and exploratory antibody-epitope mapping, alongside an internal pipeline.
Latest developments
On February 4, 2025, Zafrens announced an extension to its Series A round with participation from imec.xpand and existing investors Prime Movers Lab, Kofa Healthcare and Global Brain Corporation, bringing total capital raised to $31 million; the funds are intended to expand operational capacity, enhance platform capabilities and support pharmaceutical partnerships.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Zafrens positions itself against traditional high-throughput screening and conventional cell profiling methods, arguing that functional and omics assays separately fail to reveal causal connections; it claims a platform stage of Series A with investors including Prime Movers Lab, Blueyard, imec.xpand, Kofa Healthcare, Global Brain Corporation, Alix Ventures and FoundersX Ventures.
Unlike conventional high-throughput screening, Z-Screen does not depend on robotics for scale; nanofabrication enables millions of experiments per day on a benchtop instrument. A proprietary addressing mechanism allows every assay volume to be accessed individually in a single pipetting step and bridges physical space to sequence space, so longitudinal images of an assay volume can be tied to the genomic content within, and individual cells can be tracked in both imaging and sequencing space, permitting study of complex co-cultures at single-cell multi-omics resolution.
Technology
The foundational platform performs 50,000–200,000 simultaneous experiments in nanoliter volumes down to single-cell resolution, with an integrated mRNA sequencer. Active-seq maps omics data to live-cell function, while Active-Drug-seq adds chemical perturbations to run simultaneous phenotypic and molecular screens. Readouts include cell painting, whole-transcriptome sequencing, cytotoxicity/killing, cytokine secretion (e.g., IFNg, granzyme B), surface markers (CD69, 41BB, PD1, TIM3) and receptor or antibody sequences. The platform is described as machine-learning powered and supports longitudinal co-cultures of multiple cell types.
Go-to-market
The company positions its platform for pharmaceutical research partnerships and plans to use recent funding to scale operations and forge new partnerships with pharmaceutical companies globally; it also pursues an internal discovery pipeline.
Researchers and pharmaceutical companies conducting drug discovery across small molecules, biologics, cell therapies and gene therapies, in therapeutic areas including oncology, immunology and neuroscience.
Geography
Headquartered in San Diego, California, United States, with stated intent to build pharmaceutical partnerships globally.
History
The company was founded in 2021 in San Diego. By early 2025 it had reached the Series A stage, announcing an extension of that round on February 4, 2025 that brought total capital raised to $31 million.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 1
launches, deals, and filingsZafrens announced additional funding in its Series A round, bringing total capital raised to $31 million. imec.xpand participated alongside existing investors Prime Movers Lab, Kofa Healthcare and Global Brain Corporation. Proceeds are earmarked for expanding operational capacity, enhancing platform capabilities and building pharmaceutical partnerships.
$31M source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structureIn the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Zafrenszafrens.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Zafrens do?
- Zafrens builds an ultra-high-throughput single-cell platform that images and sequences millions of cells to screen drug candidates.
- Who founded Zafrens?
- Zafrens was founded by Martin Smrcina, Maina Ndungu in 2021.
- Who are Zafrens's investors?
- Zafrens's investors include Acequia Capital (AceCap), BlueYard Capital, Global Brain, HAWKTAIL, Iaso Ventures, Raptor Group, FoundersX Ventures, imec.xpand and 1 more.
- How much funding has Zafrens raised?
- Zafrens has disclosed $6.2M raised across 1 of its 3 known rounds.
- Where is Zafrens headquartered?
- Zafrens is headquartered in San Diego, US.