TOKYO—Cellusion Inc. a regenerative medicine start-up company developing a novel cell therapy product for bullous keratopathy, applied in about half of corneal transplantation cases, announced that it has raised 2.83 billion yen ($21 million) in Series C Round financing. New investors of the third-party allocation of shares in this Round are the investment limited partnerships operated by JIC Venture Growth Investments Co., Ltd., Nissay Capital Co., Ltd., Sparx Asset Management Co., Ltd. (Mirai Creation Fund III), Axil Capital Partners II LLP, Nikon-SBI Innovation Fund, and AIS Capital Limited, while existing investors are the investment limited partnerships operated by The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners Co., Ltd., DBJ Capital Co., Ltd., SMBC Venture Capital Co., Ltd., and Gemseki Inc.

Cellusion is promoting as its lead program the development of iPS cell-derived corneal endothelial cell substitute to resolve the challenge of corneal transplants, for which 13 million patients are reported to be on the waiting list worldwide, based on its proprietary patented technique of efficiently producing CLS001 from iPS cells.

Cellusion has raised 4.5 billion yen ($33 million) in total to date.