Study will test whether living myeloma cells can be found and recovered from a blood sample, with the goal of giving doctors bone marrow-level insight from a blood draw.

DANBURY, Conn., Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CellsBin^®, a biotechnology company pioneering Rare-Cell Biology™, today announced that it has received a Direct-to-Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The funding will advance CB-Insight™, the company’s blood-based test for multiple myeloma, a cancer that develops in the bone marrow.

The award follows CellsBin’s Series A financing, announced in September and led by 108 BioCapital. Together, this private and federal funding moves the myeloma program beyond early proof-of-concept work and into formal testing in patients and development of a test that can be offered to doctors.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of plasma cells, a type of immune cell found in the bone marrow. Examining these cancer cells directly has typically required a bone marrow biopsy, in which a sample is removed from the bone with a needle. CellsBin is taking a different approach: finding the few myeloma cells that travel in the bloodstream and capturing them intact and alive.

The long-term aim is to give doctors detailed information about a patient’s myeloma from a routine blood draw, so the disease can be checked more often and, ultimately, studied as closely as a bone marrow sample allows today.

“Blood is the next frontier in multiple myeloma,” said Natalia Neparidze, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Hematology) and Research Leader of the Myeloma Program at Yale School of Medicine. “Our goal should be to give doctors the kind of biological insight that today comes from the bone marrow, using only a blood draw. That would allow us to examine the disease more often and with less burden on patients.”

The NCI-funded program includes a large clinical study that will enroll and follow patients going forward. The principal investigator is Elan Gorshein, DO, JD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology) at Yale School of Medicine. The study will measure how well CellsBin’s technology detects and recovers living myeloma cells from patients’ blood, and compare the results with standard clinical tests, including bone marrow tests where appropriate.

“The important question now is whether this technology works reliably and consistently in patients,” said Dr. Gorshein. “The study will measure how well it detects myeloma cells in the blood and recovers them alive, alongside standard tests. If we can reliably recover these cells from blood, it could give us a powerful new way to follow myeloma over time and better understand how the disease works.”

CellsBin’s technology combines high-resolution imaging, microfluidics (tiny channels that guide fluid through a chip) and machine learning to pick out extremely rare cells from the vast number of normal cells in a blood sample and separate them out. Keeping the cells alive means they can be studied in depth, including their genetic and molecular features, rather than simply counted.

CellsBin first presented early myeloma results at the 2024 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting. Privately funded work since then made the company eligible for a Direct-to-Phase II award, which lets small businesses that have already shown their technology is feasible skip the initial Phase I stage.

Under the award, CellsBin plans to test the technology in patients, confirm that it gives consistent results, and prepare it for clinical laboratory use, including work toward a future laboratory-developed test (LDT) offered under CLIA, the federal standards for clinical laboratory testing.

“This award moves us from proving the concept to building a test for clinical use,” said Ali Kabiri, PhD, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of CellsBin. “The goal is not simply to detect a rare signal. It is to consistently recover the actual myeloma cell, intact and alive, and build a clinical laboratory process around that capability. We believe that is the path toward a future blood test and, ultimately, toward bone marrow-level insights from blood.”

“If we can use blood to see the biology that today is visible only through occasional bone marrow biopsies, the benefits go beyond convenience,” Kabiri added. “It changes how often we can check on the disease, what we can learn from each sample, and potentially how closely we can track how it changes over time.”

About CellsBin

CellsBin is pioneering Rare-Cell Biology™ to reveal the rare cells that shape human health. Its Rare-Cell Intelligence™ Platform combines microfluidics, advanced imaging, single-cell analysis and artificial intelligence to find, analyze and isolate rare cells at scale. The company is developing applications in precision diagnostics and in research that helps bring laboratory discoveries to patients, with the goal of making rare cells visible, measurable and useful in patient care.

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SOURCE 108 Bio Capital