Well, thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. It seems a bit surreal that a year ago we were all together, talking about MaxCyte, and we are really pleased to present with you and talk with you about our trading update for 2020. With me on the call is Amanda Murphy, who is our new Chief Financial Officer. You know, we look forward to discussing any questions you may have after this short presentation. So, we can move to slide two, this is the disclaimer. Please re-refer to our written statements. Slide three, we had an excellent year.
As you all know, we are the market leader in our non-viral cell engineering technologies, specifically Flow Electroporation because of its high efficiency, reproducibility, scalability, and the team that works so closely with our customers and partners. We work across a broad array of cells, and we continue to add more cells as groups clinicians discover the power of cells and using these individual cells as cell therapies. The company continues to develop and refine what is becoming a rather novel and powerful business model with revenues that have high recurring aspects.
We have this razor blade economics, as well as we capture a part of the product economics through milestones and sales-based payments or royalties. We continue to show strong, high gross margins across our portfolio. Our full year revenues for this year were $26.2 million, which is a 21% growth over 2019, and our second half revenues was $15.3 million, which was 15% over the second half of 2019.
What is also very, I think very promising for us is that we now have potential pre-commercial milestones in excess now of $950 million, and our licensed partner programs now exceed 140, with more than 100 programs licensed for clinical use. Those numbers continue to track in a good, strong upward trend. We expect our 2021 revenue growth to accelerate compared to 2020, based on the existing partners' clinical progress, and we have a very robust pipeline of potential strategic partnerships that we're in the process of developing.
Many of you have been very interested in the CARMA Cell Therapies part of our business, and we have, as you all know, we have been signaling to the investors and our shareholders that we will not continue to invest in that program going forward. We've done a significant amount of outreach and with specialist investors and partners, and we really determined that the best path for us is to take the CARMA manufacturing platform, which again is a single-day manufacturing for cell therapies and an extensive IP portfolio, bring that in-house and license that as part of the MaxCyte portfolio of technologies and platforms that we can provide to our partners.
I think you would agree that we're quite good at doing this. This is a vital part of our business, and we think we leveraged that into getting the best outcome for CARMA. We also remain on schedule to pursue our Nasdaq listing in 2021, and I'm sure you'll have questions about that. We can move to slide four. You know, this has been a very challenging year for all of us, and in addition to the financial results we have, I'm also very proud to report the extent of the team that we've been able to build and continue to build at MaxCyte. Amanda, of course, our new Chief Financial Officer, who joined us in the Q3 .
Brad Calvin, who we just promoted to Chief Commercial Officer. Many of you have met Brad. Brad was present at our capital markets day that we had, which feels like a very, very long time ago. Maher Masoud is our now our General Counsel, and we just recently brought in Steve Nardi as Vice President of Manufacturing. Steve is a specialist in manufacturing of single-use disposables. He did that with one of his major companies, which is Haemonetics, a U.S.-based company that sells blood products into the transfusion medicine market. We're quite pleased with our ability to attract these really key leaders and our ability to really begin to accelerate the growth of this business as we move toward we believe a very exciting 2021.
Slide five is new, but I think that the message is the same. We have a high-performance technology. It's very flexible, completely scalable, and very high quality, and that's allowed us to, I think, be in the position that we are in terms of leading the field in non-viral cell engineering, specifically in the cell therapy space. Slide six is to give you a sense of the breadth now of our support we can provide to our partners. This is something that we've been developing over the last several years, and we have been introducing new products, the ExPERT line, which you're aware of, which was close to two years ago.
In addition to that, we've been adding single-use disposables to the line, which provides usability from our platform from the very early stages of design of experiments all the way through to the validation and verification into clinical development and eventually onto the market. This single platform from concept to clinic really provides a unique capability for our partners because they can leverage our expertise, and we really do reduce the risk that they have in developing these therapies and moving them through the clinic. On slide seven, again, many of you are familiar with our product part. Again, this is not a services business. It's all products business.
On the left-hand side, the purple bit is where we sell our instruments into big pharma and big biotech in order for them to do drug discovery and drug development, small molecule discovery, and biologics development. It's been quite an interesting year because this technology can be used for rapid monoclonal development and manufacture, which of course is, you know, it's becoming a major element in the fight against the COVID-19 and other variants. This is a business that has, we sell instruments, single-use disposables, so this is the razor blade business with 90% gross margins.
On the right-hand side is the revenue model which we think is unique in the industry. This is where we license the technology on a non-exclusive basis across the cell therapy field. There we sell single-use disposables. We receive milestones and either royalties or sales-based payments based on strategic partnerships that we license. We now have 12 of those partnerships that I mentioned with over $950 million in milestones. This is a very important part of our business.
Not only that we can support our partners as they develop medicines for patients who really have no alternatives, but it really does help us to build a future base of revenue, and we think significant revenue for the company out in the next, you know, three, five, seven, 10 years. We're really excited about this element of the business, and it continues to grow quite well. Slide eight is a little bit more background around the market in which we operate. This market really exploded around the time that we went public. We went public in 2016, and just before that time, we had two products that reached the marketplace, one by Novartis and one by Kite, who's now owned by Gilead.
Since that period, there's been in excess of $35 billion invested in the cell therapy market. Huge attraction of capital, but still those are the only two products that have been approved for commercial use, at least in the U.S. We think that the reason for that are several. One is that there is a clear movement away from viral vectors toward non-viral technologies, and the reason for that are some of the constraints that we've laid out here for these for viral vector-based therapies.
When you move into engineering cells in the allogeneic setting or you engineer cells in stem cells for inherited genetic diseases, the market is clearly moving toward non-viral methods, and that, as you know, is a sweet spot for MaxCyte. On slide nine, we provide more than just a technology. We provide, I think, excellent field support globally now with a cadre of subject matter experts who are full-time employees of the company, many of whom are ex-customers of ours that have joined us and help our partners accelerate their development.
We also have, as many of you know, a rather significant presence in Gaithersburg, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C., where there's a very special event happening today, by the way. That R&D group is really responsible for finding new applications for our technology, and supporting our customers as they move through the clinic into commercial commercialization of these cell therapies. We also have a robust regulatory group that, again, works with each of our partners to ensure that they can move these technologies in and through the clinic.
That really does enable the accelerated path to the clinic, reduces their risk, gets them to company milestones quicker, and that's the real reason why I think we've been able to garner the position that we have and the growth that we've observed. On slide 10, that's resulted in this slide. Many of you have seen this hockey stick. It's not a projection. It's historic representation of the cumulative potential pre-commercial milestones that we have been building as a company when we first started the first deal in 2017 with Casebia, which is the joint venture between CRISPR and Vertex and Bayer, all the way through to the most recent deal we did with Myeloid Therapeutics, which we announced earlier in January.
Again, a deal we've been working on for quite some time. This is the really the who's who of companies who are developing non-viral cell-based therapies and every one of them is, you know, using MaxCyte's technology. Before I turn it over to Amanda, I wanna just spend a second on a few, a few seconds on slide 11. This is the slide I think that of all the things we do, this is the one thing that really I think gets us out of bed early and working late at night, and it's the focus on the patient. It's the ability to solve problems and develop medicines using cells to treat patients that otherwise cannot be treated.
We continue to see these indications grow as we bring new partners from a commercial perspective. We also have a robust pipeline, which we see additional indications within these major categories, as well as some new areas of indications that really do show the power of cell therapy and MaxCyte's unique position in enabling these, you know, critical medicines to move to the market. What I'd like to do now is turn this over to my colleague, Amanda Murphy, who we've been just so honored to have her join us and she's made quite an impact on the company and, you know, we look forward to a time when we can meet you all in person.
Let me turn over the microphone, if you will, to Amanda to walk you through the financial results in more detail. Amanda?
Thanks, Doug, and nice to meet everyone virtually on the phone. I'm looking forward to eventually meeting you in person. I'll just run through the numbers here quickly on slide 13. I think Doug's covered quite a bit of these, but I can add some additional information particularly around how we're looking at 2021. As Doug mentioned, we had very strong growth in the full year 2020, up 21%. It's been pretty impressive to see the commercial team and their ability to switch to a demo process, you know, coming into the company earlier this year. It's been very impressive to see that shift.
Congrats to the commercial team and very happy to have this 21% growth despite what we all know has been quite a challenging environment with the pandemic. Obviously we continue to focus on adding strategic customers and also continue to do well there. We added four in the last 12 months, Allogene, APEIRON, Caribou, and we just signed Myeloid, which was technically in early 2021. I think Doug ran through these numbers, but we now have quite a few programs under license, a total of 100 that are clinically licensed, and our milestone payments that are potentially due to us now are up from $800 million, which we disclosed last year, to $950 million.
On the CARMA side, as Doug mentioned, we are gonna bring that IP back in-house, and we feel strongly that we'll be able to drive value out of that IP, particularly with our license model that we've already gotten in place. One thing to note there that from an expense perspective, we're expecting about a $4 million expense that will fall in this first half of 2021, just as we wind down the clinical side of that business. From there, the cash expense will be minimal, if anything. Just to make that clear. We did end the year with $35 million in cash.
I did wanna make the note that on an EBITDA perspective, obviously the COVID-19 environment has still been something that we're all facing and there's continued to be lockdowns. We have said we're on track for an IPO in 2021, so there's a tiny bit of expenses one could expect in 2020 in Q4 or the end of 2020. Really the savings from the travel situation and all that probably way outweigh that. I would expect EBITDA to trend a bit above expectations for 2020. Wanted to make that particular comment.
In terms of 2021, we are expecting revenue growth to accelerate. We have said that milestone payments are a key driver of growth, continue to be, and they are looking to be stronger in 2021. Obviously we have many partners now and those partners are quickly progressing through the clinic. We have a nice setup, I think, coming into 2021 from a milestone perspective, and also as our current partners shift their preclinical programs into the clinic potentially. We're also focused on adding new customers. We do have, I think, it's fair to say, the strongest strategic partnership pipeline that we've seen in the past.
Just to note there, because the terms of those, of those partnerships are set at the outset, there is quite a bit of lead time in those negotiations, you know, call it 6 months. Just to keep that in mind, but we do have a very strong partnership there and, and obviously we're still on track in terms of our 2021 dual listing. Just to kind of take, you know, as three sort of main takeaways, it's been fascinating to see the creativity in the company coming on board with the, with the demos, new PA introductions, which also were a key part of the growthProviding flexibility to customers. We've seen really resilient demand despite the pandemic, obviously continued growth in terms of commercial licenses.
Just to reiterate, our CARMA spending will be capped at that $4 million, and we do think the IP will be a valuable asset for MaxCyte parent co. Lastly, just to reiterate, we do expect revenue growth to accelerate in 2021. If you move to slide 14, I think we've all seen these slides before. This is just updating the numbers that we've shown and just showing again that we're still trending around the 90% gross profit margin sort of average and 70% recurring revenue. No surprises on this slide, I would say. Slide 15, I don't know, Doug, if you wanna talk about the 2021 goals.
Most of this is just a reiteration of 2020 and what we said already. I did wanna Before I do ask Doug to talk about 2021, I do wanna say that we have historically said that we're operating the business to EBITDA breakeven. You know, COVID is always a variable there, but I would say we are really thinking about investing in the company. There's many opportunities for us to do so, including getting ready for our partners to become commercial, looking at some new PAs to address some of our customer needs, et cetera, looking at the VLx, which is our large-scale platform, and some other you know, longer term initiatives.
We are sort of looking to spend money in order to drive, you know, the further long-term growth acceleration on the top line. Just keep that in mind as it relates to EBITDA for 2021. With that, I'll turn it over to Doug, if you have any conclusion remarks. Thanks, Doug.
Great. Thanks, Amanda. Great review. Still on slide 15, just focusing on 2021, as mentioned, focusing on accelerating top-line growth. We've added some key programs and key people in the company this year. Completing the manufacturing expansion and automation is key for us as we look ahead for some of our partners, including, for instance, CRISPR, with their CTX001 product, which has been, you know, garnering quite a bit of attention for the treatment of sickle cell disease. As that product and other products move closer to commercialization, MaxCyte needs to be prepared in order to manufacture products, both disposables and instrumentation, to support those launches.
I've mentioned this several times, but I think that's really gonna be a major game-changing event for MaxCyte as we move into the commercial therapeutics world. As I mentioned, we continue to launch new Processing Assemblies to address customer needs. The VLx is our large-scale system, which runs 10 times the number of cells that the current STx and GTx manufactures. These are, we think, gonna be important, an important platform for large-scale allogeneic cell therapies, as well as the production of viral vectors and the production of large-scale production of rapid developed and rapid manufactured monoclonal antibodies and proteins. The chart on the bottom is a workflow diagram specific to the cell therapy field.
And this is from, you know, the product that the cells coming into the process all the way through to dosing the patient and MaxCyte's unit operation and where we fall within that workflow. Again, we have the premier product and the premier position in that unit operation. What we are evaluating right now is how we can use that position and carefully and, you know, thoughtfully move up and downstream to provide, you know, more technology to our partners, preferably within a licensing model, but also look at other reagents and consumables that are being used around that unit operation.
We think that that's a very, very powerful strategy, the ability to leverage our position, but doing it carefully so that we're not, you know, rolling up, just rolling up for revenue's sake, but we're really thinking through, you know, how we can continue to become a major part and an increasing part of the next generation of cell therapies. With that, I'd like to conclude the prepared remarks and open up the call for any questions that you may have. Any questions? I'm sure there are some.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Paul Cuddon from Numis Securities. Your line is now open.
Hello, Doug and Amanda. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two just to start off with, if that's okay. You've talked about a rapid acceleration of the licensed program, licensed instruments in the field. I'm just wondering if you could give me just a little bit of color. Are we talking kind of 5, 10, 20 instruments? Obviously without giving any company specifics. You've also talked about the potential for the VLx in viral vector and rapid monoclonal antibodies. I'm just wondering for that business model, is there an opportunity to be getting kind of royalties on potential sales that emerge from that platform? Thank you.
Great. Just a clarification, Paul. The first question, can you repeat, is that specific to a particular customer, partner, or is that just in general?
In general.
The rapid seller.
I mean, how many active clinical instruments? Just a rough number would be useful, please.
Yeah. We've, you know, we won't disclose the exact numbers, but as Amanda showed, we have over 400 instruments now in the field, which is, you know, a good growth from this period last year. We update that once a year. You can see an acceleration of the partnerships that we have. We're seeing that, you know, partners, as they move through the clinic, are re-requesting, and we're delivering additional instruments. Those additional instruments typically track to the number of clinical trials that are being conducted in a specific regulatory geographic area. Where a regulatory agency, you know, controls a geographic region, it's typical that that's where the manufacturing is done.
It's quite unusual in the cell therapy field, for, you know, someone, in, for instance, in the E.U. to take a product that's manufactured in the U.K. That just gives you a sense of how we're thinking about instrumentation. The question around rapid manufacturing and monoclonal antibodies and the development of viral vectors using the VLx, we're still in the process of developing. We've sold several of the VLXs over the last several years. I would call these kind of alpha/beta units. What we're intending to do is to bring that product more in line with the ExPERT system.
I can't really disclose the business model at this point, but we're doing, you know, extensive market studies and voice of customers to determine, you know, what are the real opportunities for this product and, you know, how we can help the companies who are developing these kind of therapies. We'll evaluate, you know, the value that we bring and what business model makes the most sense for both our partners and for MaxCyte.
Okay, thank you.
Okay. Our next question comes in the line of Julie Simmonds from Panmure Gordon. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Hi, guys. A couple of questions. Firstly, on the new Processing Assemblies that you've been rolling out, that was a really good diagram to show the differences there. Just wondering whether you're seeing that making a difference on the revenue per instrument on a consumables basis or whether it's actually just helping you sell to more customers, given that they've now got more appropriate Processing Assembly.
Sure. Is that one question or two, Julie? I think that's just one, right?
Probably just one. I've got another one else then.
Okay, just want to know. Yeah, you know, PAs are developed, and we showed slide six, that really go through the range from the very smallest all the way up to large scale. You know, the background of this is for us to be able to compete in the lower end of the transfection world, where the cost per transfection can be important. If you can do three transfections in a single disposable that you sell for $200 compared to one that does only one, you can, you know, dramatically reduce the cost per transfection, which is important for some applications. In addition to that, we've identified certain applications that we believe we can move into from a competitive standpoint with a different size cuvette.
It's both, you know, more throughput within an instrument, but also the ability to place more instruments. To answer your question, it's both of those things.
Okay, thank you. Just on sort of the change in strategy as far as CARMA is concerned, I mean, I think bringing the IP back in-house, is that partly because some of the licensing deals and with the strategic partners you're looking of doing would've needed IP that would have ended up in CARMA? Or is it that some of the IP that CARMA Cell Therapies were generating would be useful for you with strategic partnerships?
Yeah, that's a great question and very insightful. The patents that we have are around messenger RNA, and, you know, that wasn't a word that usually rolled off of people's tongue until this year. mRNA is becoming a bigger and bigger, you know, part of therapeutics development. We have, you know, seminal intellectual property around the use of mRNA in cell therapy. In some cases, we have had our partners come to us wanting a small amount of that IP carved off for them, and we've been able to provide that. As we've done evaluations and we've talked to partners, we're seeing more and more opportunity for us to be able to, you know, license the platform. I just wanna, you know, add something.
I mean, when we talk to investors, we did a significant outreach to, you know, top specialist biotech investors and partners, there was interest in investing in the platform, and they would take over the marketing of the platform. Well, when we thought about that's exactly what we do, and why would we enable another company to exploit a technology that we have and we've invented? That was, you know, one of the major reasons why we decided to bring it in-house, and begin the process of, you know, integrating this into the CARMA one-day manufacturing program, as well as the mRNA IP into the, you know, portfolio of technologies that we can provide to our partners.
Brilliant. Thanks very much, Doug.
Okay. Our next question comes from the line of Charles Weston from RBC. Your line is now open.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. A couple of backward-looking questions and then a couple of forward-looking ones, if I can. First of all, is there any chance you can give us a sense of what sales or partnerships may have been delayed in 2020 due to COVID-19? Then, talking about the developments during 2020 and this increased pipeline of strategic partnerships you have, what do you think is key driver of that? Is it, you know, the biotech funding or the, or the agreements that you already have? Is it, you know, you're expanding into more cell types? You know, any color on that would be helpful, please.
Yeah. It's all those things. I'll let Amanda talk a little bit, if she can, about the sales regarding COVID. You know, we don't. We do know that, on the partnership side, we have now a very strong position. In the past it was more of a missionary sale, now we're finding, you know, our partners are asking themselves why wouldn't they use MaxCyte because we're established. What we're seeing is growth in a handful of areas. One is, you know, the amount of capital going into new cell therapy companies, which seems to be every couple weeks there's another, you know, $50 or $100 million Series A.
That's good for us, obviously. Two is the funding of continued funding support of our existing partners, which allow them to put more programs into the clinic. You know, the third area is that we're seeing employees, team members from companies migrating into the next new company, and many of them have had experience with MaxCyte. There's really nothing more powerful than word of mouth, and we're seeing quite a bit of that as well. I guess the fourth thing that we do is we have this R&D group in within MaxCyte in Gaithersburg, plus the field applications team.
Part of their remit is really to go out and identify new applications for in cell therapy where we can solve that problem before these companies who are now being funded before they even start. So when a company is formed, in many cases, during that formation process, our team members are talking to the principals in those companies or the venture capital firms. So those are the four general, I think, catalysts for growth, and we see all those and some other ones, you know, becoming even more of an accelerator for our business.
Yeah. I could just add on to that. I mean, I think what we've seen with COVID and clinical trials, you know, there hasn't been a huge impact, I think maybe at the very, very beginning. I don't think the strategic licenses have been affected by COVID per se. We may obviously with some of the lockdowns that have increased towards the back of the year, you know, that there was some small slippage there in terms of shipments that may fall into January as opposed to sort of the end of December, so to speak. I would reiterate the pipeline as it relates to the partnerships, I mean, that really reflects the expansion of the cell therapy pipeline, as it were, across cell types.
The pipeline, although we're not disclosing specifics there, does cross many different types of cells, NK cells, neoantigens, T-cells. We're seeing definitely a broad, you know, a breadth there that we haven't seen before, and that would be reflected in sort of the general cell therapy pipeline. At that would be I think I'd reiterate what Doug said there, that COVID per se doesn't really impact the strategic licenses. It's more the, you know, just the lead time of the negotiation, as you can imagine.
Thank you. That's really helpful. Just on the forward-looking points, could you give us a sense of the scale of the larger potential milestones that could come through in 2021? I'm just trying to gauge the sort of level of uncertainty here, you know, on that side of the business against the recurring revenue and much more stable revenues from the other side of the business and where the volatility or the scale of the potential volatility could be there.
Amanda, you wanna take that one?
Yeah. I appreciate that you would like, you know, that information is important. What we've just said is that they are going to be larger or likely to be larger. Obviously, they're somewhat dependent on our partners and their progression than they were in 2020. We're not really disclosing specifics there. You know, I think one important point to make is as we get more programs on board through the partnerships, you know, now we have 100-plus, you know, over 100 on the clinical side, they become sort of stacked over time. They're relatively small so they are almost becoming recurring revenue.
I think the message here is they're likely to be larger and potentially even less lumpy over time as, you know, those programs sort of progress and we continue to add onto the, onto the stack, if you will.
Thank you. Just one other one before I stop hogging the line. In terms of your, you mentioned the vertical integration, the moving upstream and downstream. I just wondered how developed your thinking is there, whether this is sort of still exploratory or whether you've picked a few areas, and if so, are they going to require meaningful capital potentially to be deployed on bolt-ons and acquisitions or more of an organic process, you know, particularly through that field applications group?
I think the strategy is being further developed. I think Amanda Murphy coming on board has helped refine that. We have hired some additional people. We didn't disclose this, but two other vice presidents have joined the company, one that's focused on business development, to both on business development, one who just joined us from a major life science tools company. The strategy is, it will be a combination of those things, Charles. It'll be, you know, early stage technologies that we've identified that we believe we can develop similar to what we did with our Flow Electroporation technologies.
There are gonna be technologies that maybe have the potential but don't have the right commercial infrastructure or the commercial, you know, customer-facing that we have, and we can introduce those technologies into our market, which we think are very attractive, and we could do in a very capital efficient way. That could either be, you know, a technology that would have to be further developed or something that could be bolted on. We're looking at all those. We don't have a clear sense of, at this point, of what the capital requirements are gonna be for that. That'll be something I think you're gonna seek more visibility as this, as 2021, you know, begins to unfold for the company.
Okay. Thanks, Doug. Thanks, Amanda.
Sure, Charles. Thank you.
Okay, our next question comes from the line of Paul Cuddon from Numis Securities. Your lines are open.
Hello again. I didn't realize we could have seven questions, but so I thought I'd get back in the queue. I was just wondering about the competitive landscape in instrumentation and whether you've seen any of your research grade competitors sort of step up their FDA master file type activities.
Yeah, specifically, we have not, we keep, you know, close tabs on this with our partners. Obviously, when we engage in a partnership discussion, it's, you know, what keeps us, I think, able to sleep at night is that because of the business model and the strategy, if someone were to come in with a, you know, a very inexpensive lab scale device that had at least the Master File, we would hear about that, and we're not hearing anything about that in the field. It's not, it's not something we're seeing in the field today.
Fantastic. That is it from me. Thank you.
Sure. Thanks, Paul.
Okay, our next question comes from the line of Lala Gregorek from Trinity Delta. Your line's now open.
Hello there.
Hi, Lala.
Hi. My question is, essentially trying to get a little bit more detail about this, you know, the burgeoning pipeline that you have. It's very useful, from the points that were raised in answer to Charles. I was sort of curious. You've mentioned a sort of a six-month lead time. In terms of context, is that more or less than it's been in the past? Is that to do with COVID? Is it one of those things where essentially it's how long a piece of string is? As part of that, are you seeing a bit more of a focus of, you know, stepwise negotiations, i.e., they're first for the research contract, and then we're talking about clinical, and then we're talking about commercial or companies going all in at a earlier stage?
I can handle that. It varies dramatically, and I think six months is just maybe an example or two. It can vary rather dramatically from partner to partner. You know, some of these companies are very early stage. They'll take a research license from us, and it may require them a year or two of preclinical work in order to move into the clinic. We typically don't see, you know, someone coming in at the very early stage with a full commercial license. That said, Myeloid's relatively early stage, so they did come in.
You know, a company like Allogene came in after they're already in the clinic and swapped out, you know, kind of another device for our device. It really, it's all over the place, Lala. I wish we could give you more, more specifics around that. What we are seeing, though, is that the, you know, the creation of these new cell therapy companies really is a part of what we try to focus on as a company, get in there early, get in as they're spinning. In many cases, these groups are spinning out of, you know, university labs.
We're in the process, and we've actually hired some people that are more scouts in those, you know, a major academic institutions that are spawning these kind of companies. I think that what we're seeing the growth is just the organic growth of the industry, in all these different indications and different cell types.
Great. Essentially One could assume that, a number of the research licenses that you currently have would transition into the larger clinical licenses, commercial licenses over time. Talking about the creation of new companies and I suppose the split between, what's in your pipeline with respect to companies that are completely new versus those where They're known to MaxCyte, either in terms of the company itself or the individual management, what would you say the split of activity is there, if you can comment?
What was the last sentence? I'm sorry.
I was saying whether you could comment on, you know, what the split is between, I suppose, completely novel companies and those that are either existing companies or existing management that you're already familiar with.
I think that's. We really can't give that kind of disclosure. I think also it's in some cases very difficult to figure that out because many of these companies, as you know, are in stealth mode, in some cases for six months, in some cases a couple years. Myeloid is an example of a company that's been in relative stealth mode until the announcement of their major financing in January.
Their article on STAT. It really just depends. I mean, we try to again, we try to cover all the space, and I think that's one of the advantages of being focused in on non-viral cell therapies that allows us to, you know, really put a spotlight everywhere we can on this, these new enterprise creations. If there's a company that's spinning into a cell therapy asset.
The benefit of that also is that many of these companies could be companies that we've established relationships with on the drug discovery side of the business. Our sales team and our FASs work both on the cell therapy side and the drug discovery side. There's no distinction from a go-to-market strategy in terms of our folks in the field.
Great. That's really helpful. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out next on the partnership front. Thank you.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, that's star and one if you wish to ask a question.
Okay. It sounds like there's no further questions. Is that correct? Hearing none, please feel free to contact us. The last slide on the deck, slide 16, has our IR email address. If there's a question that you would have liked to ask but weren't able to, or one comes to mind now or later this evening, please feel free to contact us. We love speaking with our investors and analysts. I just want to thank you for your continued support, especially during this difficult year. We look forward to a very successful 2021, which will be. We think will continue to be challenging.
Please stay safe, keep well, and we really appreciate working with us in order to make a difference in patients' lives. Thank you and, a belated Happy New Year. Appreciate your support.