Navan Technologies

The NanoStraw technology is a versatile platform technology which establishes a direct, physical connection into cells to overcome a huge challenge faced by cell/gene therapy and regenerative medicine companies globally: delivering materials into hard-to-transfect-cells in a gentle, non-perturbative manner.

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Cargo delivery via NanoStraws drastically reduces the working steps, costs, technical difficulties and cell death involved in cell therapy manufacturing. By overcoming viability and manufacturing challenges plaguing traditional viral-based and electroporation-based development, NAVAN is actively innovating therapies in a broad range of indications with strategic partners.

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NanoStraws are born from conventional polymeric track-etched cell culture membranes. Membranes are coated with alumina and etched to produce fields of NanoStraws, of which the geometric parameters (diameter, thickness, and height) are fully controllable.

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By piercing through membranes of cells, NanoStraws provide a pipeline for the diffusion of biomolecules directly into the cytosol.

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To ensure delivery of charged cargo such as DNA plasmids, RNA strands, and proteins into the cells, a tiny electric field is applied to locally and temporarily destabilize the lipid bilayer in contact with the NanoStraws. Very low pulses are utilized in this process, which mobilizes the cargo, driving it into the cell in a dosage-controlled fashion.

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Cargo-Agnostic: Capable of delivering DNA, mRNA, and proteins with high efficacy, including functionally-active proteins such as Cas9 and others.

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Effectiveness of Delivery: Gentle, non-perturbative delivery is effective for virtually all primary cell types with unparalleled cell viability and recovery yield. Published results prove adoptive efficacy in vivo of Navan transfected cells is the same as completely untreated cells.

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Dosage Control: NanoStraw platform allows for precise dosage control which is unachievable with standard chemical or physical delivery.

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Fully-Scalable Approach: From a small number of cells (~5), relevant for rare cell types, to delivery of 10s of Millions of cells at once in a multi-well plate. A much larger capacity system (1 Billion+ cells) is in development now.