IonGate Biosciences GmbH (Germany) - Dec 2007

unquote
01 December 2007

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Lead investor Heidelberg Innovation and KfW (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau) have closed the third funding round for biotechnology company IonGate Biosciences GmbH at €4.6m.

Previous investments included a seed financing in 2001, and a second funding round in 2004 from Heidelberg Innovation at €3m (November/December 2004, page 12).

IonGate will use the increase in capital to expand its international business activities, for the worldwide commercialisation of its SURFE2R Technology (SURFace Electrogenic Event Reader) and for the further development of the SURFE2R Workstation.

The company formed IonGate Biosciences Inc in New York, US as a wholly-owned affiliate to drive marketing in North America, in December 2007. The raised funds will be partly used to establish distribution channels within the US. The subsidiary supports IonGate to meet the increasing demand for sophisticated techniques to automatically analyse electrogenic membrane proteins with its SURFE2R Technology.

Furthermore, the invested capital will fuel the continuous development of the SURFE2R Workstation, utilised for a direct functional characterisation of transport proteins. This technology platform, which is especially designed for pharmaceutical drug screening, is the only available system so far to automatically screen for lead structures in a fast and cost-efficient fashion with high throughput. Thus, IonGate provides the pharmaceutical industry with a proprietary technology for efficient development of new agents.

Company

Based in Frankfurt/Main in Germany, IonGate Biosciences GmbH develops, produces and markets innovative screening technologies to investigate transporters. Transporters are essential for the metabolic functions of the cell, information processing in the entire organism and play a fundamental role to human health. The company supplies complete solutions, besides disposables and reagents, this mainly comprise individual consulting services comprising the design of customised applications. The company was established in 2000 and currently employs more than 30 people.

People

Dr Christoph Kronabel led the transaction for Heidelberg Innovation and is member of the advisory board of IonGate.

Advisers

Equity - CMS Hasche Sigle, Stefan-Ulrich Müller (Legal)

Sourced from: Deutsche unquote" 95 (Feb 2008)