Understanding the Portal Platform

Portal Bio’s mechanoporation platform enables intracellular delivery of gene-editing tools (CRISPR RNPs), nucleic acids (mRNA, siRNA), proteins, probes, and small molecules directly into living cells while preserving cell health and function. The system supports research, high-throughput screening, and translation-ready workflows with high efficiency and viability across diverse cell types.

Portal’s mechanoporation technology gently permeabilizes the cell membrane, allowing macromolecules to passively enter the cytosol. Because the process is mechanical, not electrical or chemical, it preserves membrane integrity and supports high viability and functionality even in sensitive cell types.

Unlike electroporation or lipid transfection, Portal uses gentle mechanical membrane deformation to achieve precise delivery with improved viability and functional performance, making it well-suited for sensitive applications such as cell therapy development and gene editing. The platform integrates into existing processes from small-scale R&D to higher-throughput contexts.

It delivers macromolecular cargo directly to the cytosol without harsh electrical pulses or chemical carriers, improving post-delivery cell fitness for downstream assays and therapies.

Portal fits flexibly across many points in virtually any project workflow—from whole blood and unseparated samples to post-isolation or activation steps, and even as part of assay readouts themselves. Further, because the platform can deliver functional agents directly into live cells, it can be used both for engineering (e.g., editing, expression, or reprogramming) and for analysis—introducing probes, reporters, or sensors that reveal what’s happening inside the cell in real time. This versatility allows Portal to integrate seamlessly into discovery, manufacturing, and analytical pipelines.)

Portal has been validated across a wide range of both primary and immortalized cells. This includes T cells (CD4⁺, CD8⁺, and CAR-T), NK cells, B cells, monocytes, dendritic cells, and a variety of different stem cells, including iPSCs, HSCs, and MSCs, as well as common research lines such as HEK293, K562, and Jurkat. Ask us if you’re interested in a different cell type!

Portal enables a new generation of applications that were previously difficult or impossible with viral or electroporation-based methods. These include multi-circRNA programming of T cells to transiently express multiple genes—such as CAR constructs, cytokine support, and resistance modules—in a single delivery step, and non-viral engineering of B cells, NK cells, and monocytes for next-generation immunotherapy research. The platform also supports rapid functional assays within living cells, such as probing protein-protein interactions or protein degradation dynamics, as well as point-of-care cell preparation, enabling same-day modification and reinfusion without viral vector production. Additionally, Portal’s precision and gentle delivery make it ideal for in-cell screening and synthetic biology applications that require high viability and tight control over cargo dosing.

The gentle mechanical delivery process minimizes stress and avoids osmotic or electrical shock, allowing successful delivery to rare subsets or patient-derived samples that cannot tolerate traditional transfection or electroporation methods. Portal’s optimization workflow ensures high recovery even from limited or precious samples.

Access is available through a partner beta program and for commercial use with academic, biotech, and pharma organizations. Contact the Portal team to scope your application and integration path.

Yes, our platform is designed to support both research and commercial applications. We work with academic institutions, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and other partners who are developing next-generation therapies and drugs.

After a purchase, our science team works with you on a 2 day implementation process to help you optimize your cells and cargoes of interest.  Our scientists will collaborate with your team to ensure not only a successful implementation, but also work through any application specific challenges that you might encounter.

Portal does not run traditional demos; instead, a 30-day trial period allows you to evaluate performance in your own workflow after purchase. If the platform is not a fit within 30 days, the instrument can be returned at no cost. Users are encouraged to engage the science team for troubleshooting during the trial.

Yes. The MilliBooster is a GMP-ready clinical consumable designed to integrate with common cell processing systems, including Fresenius Kabi’s Lovo and Thermo Fisher’s Rotea.

Absolutely. We frequently partner with organizations developing next-generation therapeutics or unique cell types/cargoes. Custom collaborations can include optimization, hardware integration, or assay development.

Yes!

The platform supports gene editing, cell therapy development, and drug discovery by enabling new capabilities for specific applications. It is effective for expression studies, functional screens, and therapeutic engineering.  It can also enable many new applications where assays that are typically done outside of a cell can now be done within a cell.

Typically, we use OptiMem for cells, but it will depend on the cell type.  Please ask the science team and/or refer to the protocols posted online.

For the Gateway system, a practical upper bound is ~100 million cells per booster depending on cell type.

Boosters can be reused during a single experiment run but should not be stored and reused later.