FREMONT, Calif., March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- LumiCyte, Inc. announced today it has completed its $20M second round (Series B) financing, led by Tullis-Dickerson & Co. with additional funding from OrbiMed Advisors LLC and reinvestment by the Redleaf Group.
``We have built important strategic alliances and have advanced our operational capabilities significantly over this last year and are pleased to complete this latest milestone in LumiCyte's corporate development. The combination of experience and vision represented by the union of Tullis-Dickerson, OrbiMed and Redleaf at LumiCyte provides us with considerable momentum as we move forward. We have already begun to expand our operations worldwide, providing enabling services and mission-critical information to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and diagnostic companies,'' said T. William Hutchens, CEO of LumiCyte.
LumiCyte has developed powerful protein biochips to help address complex medical problems, such as cancer and diabetes, by monitoring proteins at the molecular level. The onset of disease, and the successful treatment of disease, are changes in health state associated with alterations in proteins, typically many different proteins. LumiCyte's biochips are very sensitive protein detectors and are used to monitor changes in thousands of individual proteins in less than a single drop of blood or other biofluid.
LumiCyte's scientists work directly with physicians to establish biochip utility, such as early detection of disease onset, or to distinguish various disease types and stages of disease progression, or to monitor individual patient response to therapy. LumiCyte then employs its Utility-driven discovery(TM) strategy to rapidly discover specific alterations in protein profiles associated with changes in health state. LumiCyte can then move immediately from discovery mode operations to high-throughput validation operations, with the same biochips, on a scale involving hundreds or thousands of patients.
In contrast to other technologies, the patented SELDI process enables LumiCyte's biochips to accomplish this without any requirement to know beforehand which of the many proteins might be involved.
``We believe the SELDI biochip technology is quite enabling. We invested in Ciphergen primarily as a supplier of SELDI-based bench top ''tools`` for routine use by biologists in their own research laboratories. LumiCyte, however, has focused on the generation and aggregation of information with a central database designed to support biochip products for use well beyond the laboratory. The inventor of SELDI, Dr. Hutchens, has assembled an impressive team at LumiCyte to produce not only next generation SELDI biochips, but also powerful new bioinformatics software. We are especially excited by LumiCyte's vision to move proteomics from the bench top to the bedside,'' said Carl Gordon from OrbiMed.
LumiCyte has established a headquarters facility in Fremont, CA and plans to open satellite facilities worldwide to offer its partner pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics companies, access to unique information for drug development, clinical trials and clinical diagnostics derived from its proprietary BioChips and BioPhore Knowledgebase(TM). LumiCyte holds exclusive rights to SELDI patents and intellectual property for its services, products and markets.
About Tullis-Dickerson & Co.
Tullis-Dickerson (www.tullisdickerson.com) is one of the U.S.'s largest health care-focused private equity groups, providing capital to small and mid-sized companies. The firm provides seed through late-stage capital to creative, committed management teams leading growth companies. Within healthcare, Tullis-Dickerson focuses on several segments -- biotechnology and life sciences, health care information technology and informatics, health care services/managed care, medical devices, and medical distribution.
About OrbiMed Advisors LLC
OrbiMed (www.orbimed.com) is one of the world's largest and most successful managed funds in healthcare, with the principal mission of maintaining an in-depth perspective on the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries worldwide. The OrbiMed team, with complementary backgrounds in science, finance, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, strives to find uniquely strong investments all along the healthcare continuum from start-ups in biotechnology to multi-national pharmaceutical companies. To find investment opportunities, OrbiMed professionals critically analyze hundreds of public and private companies around the world each year.
About Redleaf Group, Inc.
Redleaf Group (www.redleaf.com) is a technology operating company that leverages its digital GRID (Global Resource for Internet Development) to provide its partner companies with market access, strategic counsel and operational support from a team of seasoned professional managers whose specialties include finance, engineering, product development, systems integration, marketing and human capital management.
About LumiCyte, Inc.
LumiCyte's (www.lumicyte.com) patented biochip and informatics products deliver new ways of unlocking the essence of human life. LumiCyte generates and distributes new knowledge through the acquisition, integration, and mining of genomics, proteomics, and clinical diagnostics information sets. LumiCyte and its clients are focused on the discovery, validation and rapid development of new diagnostic, therapeutic, and drug discovery opportunities. Established in 1999, LumiCyte's corporate offices and production facilities are located in Fremont, CA.
SOURCE: LumiCyte, Inc. |
