Germany, April 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Graffinity Pharmaceutical Design, today announced the completion of a Euro 30.6 million pre-IPO fundraising from an international syndicate led by Merlin Biosciences. Graffinity, based in Heidelberg, Germany, is a biotechnology company with an integrated chemical proteomics approach to address the novel challenges of the post-genomic era for smarter and more efficient drug discovery and development.
The syndicate included new investors Merlin Biosciences, Oxford Bioscience Partners, The Dow Chemical Company and GIMV. All of Graffinity's existing investors also committed further funds: TechnoStart, 3i Group plc, Heidelberg Innovation and tbg Technologie-Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Ausgleichsbank.
Starting from the target gene, Graffinity's abilities range from protein expression to screening on chemical microarrays in a label-free binding format, to subsequent steps of rapid array-aided small molecule evolution for cost-effective discovery of new chemical entities.
CEO of Graffinity, Dr. Dirk Vetter, commented: ``We are delighted with the results of this financing round and the endorsement of our technology platform by this high profile international syndicate. Our platform is based on chemical microarrays, label free imaging and our proprietary approach to compound optimisation known as rapid array-informed structure evolution (RAISE). This integrated platform provides a next generation discovery process beyond HTS''.
``We plan to use this financing to enable rapid market entry and penetration, as well as the industrialisation of our core technology platform,'' he added.
Mark Clement, Managing Director of Merlin Biosciences' European Activities, said: ``The rapid pace of technological advancement and high throughput screening efforts (HTS) has led to drug discovery challenges in itself. The extensive number of targets uncovered by the human genome project as well the vast number of potential leads generated through combinatorial chemistry efforts has led to a bottleneck which needs to be addressed. Companies which offer a smarter and more efficient approach to drug discovery, or 'escalator' companies, have the potential to generate extensive value for big pharma and biotech partners as well as for their own in-house programmes.
``Graffinity has a strong customer focus as well as a number of imminent deals with industry leaders. They also have the ability to add value to other programmes as well as establish a proprietary position with in-house NCEs.''
Graffinity's RAISE technology holds several advantages over traditional HTS methods as it is based on the optimisation of fingerprint-derived active substructures instead of a slower, more time consuming method of synthesising ever increasing numbers of idealised drug-like molecules. This process allows Graffinity to sample chemical space, far beyond the capacity of any other existing compound screening approach.
Unlike most technology platform start-ups Graffinity was not established around an academic group. Rather, the co-founders came together to take a fresh look at small molecule arrays and define what was needed to address screening and lead discovery needs, and then initiated a ``from-scratch'' technology development program.
Graffinity is a German biotech company based in Heidelberg that has taken an innovative approach to drug discovery which will significantly speed up the identification of lead structures. Graffinity's technology platform integrates chemical microarrays and a novel label-free methodology which allows the standardised analysis of proteins with numerous small organic molecules. During the RAISE process molecules are further developed to interact selectively and with high affinity with the target protein. Graffinity is looking for long-term partnerships with pharmaceutical, biotech and agrochemical companies exploiting the full potential of its lead generating platform.
For further information on Graffinity go to graffinity.com |
