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here to printBusy month for IntegenX
March 2011
SHARING OPTIONS:
As for the Series B capital influx, Jovanovich says IntegenX
will fund the commercialization of the Apollo 324 System for next-generation
sequencing library preparation, the development of the Apollo 200 RapidHIT
System for DNA-based human identification and global marketing of the GenTegra
product line.
The Domain Associates-led financing included participation
from previous investors In-Q-Tel and RONAholdings LLC, and also brings in
participation from GenVault investors QuestMark Partners, Cross Creek Partners
and Greenspring Associates, thanks to the acquisition.
“The management team at IntegenX has brought more than 40
products to market over the past 20 years at Applied Biosystems, Molecular
Dynamics, Amersham and other successful companies,” says Dr. Jim Blair,
founding partner at Domain Associates. “By focusing on system integration and
sample preparation, IntegenX has built a valuable portfolio of products for
sequencing and human identification that are needed in the market right now.”
And that portfolio-boosting talk segues right into the two
late-February deals struck by IntegenX.
In one of those deals, IntegenX gains access to Caliper's
microfluidics patent portfolio, and Jovanovich intends to leverage Caliper’s
technology and other intellectual property to boost efforts in commercializing
the Apollo 200 system. According to IntegenX, profiles generated on the system
can be used to match existing DNA records in various databases or even expand them.
Jovanovic says the agreement with Caliper “supports our
sample-to-answer strategy and enables us to build upon IntegenX's core
strengths in product development and integration.”
In the second deal announced in late February, SoftGenetics
will provide GeneMarker HID forensics software to IntegenX to enhance data
analysis features in the Apollo 200 system, allowing for the generation of
unique human DNA profiles in standardized formats.
While these four milestones are all clustered together in a
single month, IntegenX hasn’t been dormant up to this point.
In March 2010, the company—formerly known as Microchip
Biotechnologies—changed to the IntegenX moniker to better acknowledge the
company’s focus on integrating sample preparation and analysis technologies
into complete products “that address generic problems shared by life science
and biotechnology research laboratories worldwide,” according to the company.
Jovanovic believes his company’s technology will eliminate
the most acute pain points affecting widely adopted laboratory workflows, in
part with the help of Integenx’s MOVe valves and integration of fragmented
metering, mixing and dispensing of microliter volumes, which are part of the
Apollo system.
“Many scientists no longer have the time or the skill to
integrate reagent kits, columns, beads, mixers, detectors, incompatible
protocols and instruments that don’t communicate with each other,” Jovanovich
said at the time. “We automate the most fragmented workflow elements into
automated systems that provide predictable, high quality molecular biology
output. For the lab worker, researcher, forensic scientist or lab clinician,
IntegenX makes the usage of DNA and RNA accessible to staff who do not have to
become technology specialists in sample preparation.”
The name change was followed by the opening of a new
headquarters and manufacturing facility roughly a month later because the
company had outgrown its location in nearby Dublin, Calif. “This new location
provides a more collaborative environment where we can discuss ideas easily and
solve problems quickly, and the space and facilities we need to ramp up
operations,” Jovanovich said at the time.
That, in turn, was followed some months later with the October 2010 announcement that the company was awarded a contract worth as much as $14.8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop an integrated sample-to-sequence system that could rapidly detect and identify genetically engineered, medically relevant and emerging pathogens from environmental samples. After that came a November 2010 announcement that IntegenX received four grants totaling $976,000 under the Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project Program (QTDP).
That, in turn, was followed some months later with the October 2010 announcement that the company was awarded a contract worth as much as $14.8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop an integrated sample-to-sequence system that could rapidly detect and identify genetically engineered, medically relevant and emerging pathogens from environmental samples. After that came a November 2010 announcement that IntegenX received four grants totaling $976,000 under the Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project Program (QTDP).
“We are pleased to receive federal recognition that our
platforms have the potential for impacting the development of therapeutics,
molecular diagnostics, and discovery of genetic markers that will improve
outcomes for patients,” Jovanovich says.
The QTDP is provided under Section 48D of the Internal
Revenue Code, enacted as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health
Care Act of 2010. Qualifying projects had to show potential to produce new
therapies, reduce long-term healthcare costs, or significantly advance the goal
of curing cancer within the next 30 years. Preference was given to projects
that showed the greatest potential to create and sustain high-quality,
high-paying jobs in the U.S. and advance the country’s competitiveness in the
fields of life, biological and medical sciences.
Code: E031112
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