Biotechnology firm Affomix Corp. has completed a $7 million series A financing. New investors Four Seasons Ventures and Connecticut Innovations have joined founding investor Elm Street Ventures in the financing.
Affomix has created an automated approach for obtaining antibodies useful in the diagnosis of disease and the development of therapies.
“My co-founders and I are delighted with the series A financing.” said Michael I. Sherman, president of Affomix. “The strong enthusiasm of the investment syndicate reinforces our determination to fundamentally change the ways in which commercially valuable antibodies are identified and utilized.”
With the speed and effectiveness of the methods being implemented by Affomix, it expects to obtain antibodies against hundreds and even thousands of protein targets. The company expects to be able to do this in the time and with the effort that it typically takes with conventional approaches to generate antibodies against one or a few proteins.
“Current methods for developing monoclonal antibodies are often tedious, time-consuming and expensive,” said Robert Bettigole, managing partner of Elm Street Ventures. “The technologies that Affomix is developing are expected to dramatically shorten the time and expense required for the generation of antibodies suitable for research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications.”
With large libraries of so many antibodies available, each selected for the ability to bind tightly and selectively to its designated target protein, the process could make it possible for the first time to perform accurately simultaneous analyses of thousands of different proteins.
“Four Seasons is very proud to partner with a company we believe will not only revolutionize proteomics research, but will allow for sweeping improvements in the understanding of large-scale biology,” said Véronique Bardach, managing general partner of Four Seasons Ventures.
“It”™s highly credible team of founders, including two Yale University professors as well as seasoned, serial entrepreneurs as president and head of research, gave CI the confidence to invest,” said Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations, which looks to invest in high-tech Connecticut startups and bills itself as a quasi-public institution.
