DFJ Esprit et al. back extended £6.9m Horizon Discovery series-C

Ellie Pullen
04 June 2013

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

A consortium of venture capital firms and private investors has injected a further ТЃ6.9m into Horizon Discovery as part of the final close of the company's extended series-C round.

The round's final closing saw backing from existing investors DFJ Esprit, MVM Life Science Partners, Roche Venture Fund, private investors David Evans and Peter Collins, and Providence Investment Company.

Horizon also received backing from new investors Wren Capital, Calculus Capital and members of the company's senior management team, alongside the University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund. This final round of fundraising for the series-C was led by Dr Jonathon Miller, CEO of protein research tools supplier Abcam Plc.

The latest equity injection brings the total amount raised in the round to £18.2m. Horizon has been fundraising for its series-C round since 2010 and now expects to see a period of organic growth, following the round's final close.

Specifically, this final bout of funding will allow Horizon to expand its product development capability and boost the sales of its two main products, Genesis and X-Man, with the aim of driving the company's profit up in the second half of 2013.

Previous funding
In September 2011, MVM led the £11.3m second closing of Horizon's series-C funding round. DFJ Esprit, Roche and a number of private investors took part in the investment.

Prior to this, DFJ Esprit led the £6.25m first closing of the company's series-C round in 2010.

Company
Horizon Discovery was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Cambridge. The company employs approximately 100 staff and saw revenue of £4.5m for 2012, with a target of £7.5m for this year.

Horizon provides research tools for the development of personalised medicines. The company has developed the Genesis platform, which offers the ability to edit genomes by using recombinant adeno-associated virus vectors to stimulate a cell's natural DNA repair mechanism, known as homologous recombination. This allows the insertion, deletion or substitution of a DNA sequence into a mammalian cell.

People
Darren Disley is Horizon's president and CEO. Chief scientific officer Chris Torrance founded the company alongside Alberto Bardelli.

Abcam's Jonathon Miller is a non-executive director on Horizon's board, alongside Hugo Harrod, a partner at MVM. Martin Murphy of MVM acts as an investor director for the company. Nigel Pitchford, a partner at DFJ Esprit, also sits on Horizon's board as an investor director.

Neither Wren Capital nor Calculus Capital will be appointing members of their teams to sit on Horizon's board of directors.

Advisers
Equity - Bracher Rawlins (Legal).
Company - Wragge & Co (Legal, tax).