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Biotech / Medical : Bioinformatics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nigel bates who wrote (46)	11/7/2001 10:49:11 AM
From: nigel bates	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 80

Locus Discovery Raises $40 Million in Series D Financing; Additional $12 Million Raised in Second Closing BLUE BELL, Pa., Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Locus Discovery, Inc., a new computational drug design biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it has raised a total of $40 million in the company's third round of preferred stock financing. The financing was completed in two phases. On September 7, 2001 Locus announced that it raised $28 million in the first closing of this Series D financing, and yesterday completed the second closing for an additional $12 million. A previous investor, Prism Venture Partners, made the major investment in this second close, with other existing and new investors also participating. Locus has now raised $88 million in three rounds of financing since September 1999. Liberty Wanger Asset Management served as the lead investor in this financing. Other investors in this third round of financing include: Delphi Ventures, ING Furman Selz, INVESCO Global Health Sciences Fund, Cooper Hill Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, Dresdner Kleinwort Capital, Tredegar Investments, Life Sciences Venture Fund, First Tier Biotechnology Partners, and Origin Capital. All of the major institutional investors from Locus' prior financings participated in this round. ``The high level of participation from existing stockholders demonstrates tremendous support for Locus Discovery, and we are very pleased and honored with their show of confidence and enthusiasm for our drug discovery and development approach. Current stockholders benefited from a significant increase in valuation over previous rounds, with strong interest from both new and existing investors. Our unique computational approach to drug discovery has clearly captured the imagination of leading investors,'' commented Nicholas Landekic, President and Chief Executive Officer of Locus Discovery. Locus Discovery's computational technology is a proprietary means of first rapidly and accurately identifying the biologically relevant active binding site of a protein, and then designing small molecule antagonists or agonists of the protein's activity. The technology utilizes proprietary computational procedures and requires knowledge only of the structure of a protein. Unlike traditional research approaches, the Locus Discovery computational technology represents the potential to compress into weeks what previously took several years in the drug discovery process, enabling the identification of small molecule drugs substantially faster, with a much higher success rate, and on a much larger scale than has previously been possible. Locus Discovery is based on technology exclusively licensed from Sarnoff Corporation. The Locus Discovery technology can be used to design therapeutic compounds for many thousands of known protein targets, as well as thousands of new protein structures being identified through genomic research. Locus Discovery is undertaking over a dozen drug discovery programs in cancer, viral and bacterial infectious diseases, respiratory disorders, and neurological and other disorders...