AyoxxA Biosystems Closes Series A Financing Round

2.6 million Euro financing will accelerate development of cutting-edge technology for protein analysis

AyoxxA Biosystems, an international biotechnology company, today announces it has closed a 2.6 million Euro Series A financing round. The round was led by Wellington Partners Venture Capital and included NRW.BANK, HTGF – High-Tech-Gründerfonds, and private investors, Rainer Christine and Dr. Gregor Siebenkotten, both formerly executive board members and co-founders of amaxa biosystems.

The funds raised will be used to drive the further development of AyoxxA’s proprietary platform technology and the scale-up of production of its novel bead-based biochips as the company moves towards commercialization.

AyoxxA’s technology is aimed at transforming the throughput and accuracy of protein analysis to deliver the analytical power now seen only for DNA arrays. The platform is based around proprietary In-situ Encoded Bead-based Arrays (IEBA) which allow the simultaneous measurement of multiple proteins from minute samples.

Unlike current bead-based microarrays, AyoxxA’s IEBA need no physical label to allow multiplex analysis and thus hugely reduce the complexity of downstream analysis while increasing the number of individual proteins that can be analysed at the same time. The arrays are designed to be readily adaptable to standard high throughput screening systems and offer the potential of tens of thousands of ELISA assays in a single well of a biochip.

Dr. Andreas Schmidt, CEO of AyoxxA, said: “This fundraising provides Ayoxxa with the resources to significantly accelerate the scale-up of production of our unique bead-based biochips and, through the expansion of our base in Cologne, prepare to bring our technology to market. We believe our technology can revolutionise protein analysis and with our growing presence in Europe combined with our continued access to the world-class science in Singapore we are uniquely positioned to deliver on that promise.”

Dr. Regina Hodits, General Partner of Wellington Partners Venture Capital, commented: “AyoxxA’s technology has the potential to become the new standard for the precise, fast, and cost effective analysis of multiple protein-protein interactions in limited sample volumes. This will allow the company to initially address a research market worth hundreds of millions of dollars and longer term reach into pharmaceutical screening and ultimately diagnostics. In Andreas Schmidt and co-founder and CSO Dieter Trau, we have a very entrepreneurial team which has already rapidly brought the AyoxxA technology from the idea stage to first proof-of-concept. We look forward to working with the company as it builds on this excellent foundation and delivers benefits to its customers and investors.”

Rainer Christine Chairman of the Board of AyoxxA said: “It is exciting to be investing in AyoxxA at a critical point in the Company’s development. I have followed its story closely since it was founded by Andreas and Dieter, who had invented the technology as a Professor of Bioengineering at the National University of Singapore. I am impressed by the progress made in advancing the technology and by the potential it has to address significant markets. I hope to bring the experience I gained in successfully building amaxa to the Board and Company as it grows.”

Dr. Matthias Dill, HTGF investment manager, added: “We are pleased to have played a role in building a consortium of experienced investors to optimally support AyoxxA as it benefits further from its position as part of two high tech countries. The company’s choice to base its headquarters in Cologne highlights the continuing attractiveness of Germany as a site for building new companies and growing international businesses.”

Following the fundraising, AyoxxA’s Board of Directors will comprise: Chairman Rainer Christine; Board Members Regina Hodits, Matthias Dill and Aristotelis Nastos (NRW.BANK); and Board Observers Lukas Günther (Wellington Partners) and Florian Stinauer (NRW.BANK).

About AyoxxA
AyoxxA, an international biotech company based in Cologne, Germany, and Singapore, has developed a proprietary technology platform for multiplexed protein analysis. Core to this cutting-edge technology are “In-situ Encoded Bead-based Arrays” (IEBA) which allow simultaneous, precise and cost effective protein analysis in very small sample volumes. These novel biochips allow users to combine high throughput screening and multiplexed assay formats at the same time and thus have the potential to revolutionize applications in biomedical research, pharmacological screening, and diagnostics.
AyoxxA was founded as a spin-off of the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2010. The company received multiple grants in Singapore from the National Research Foundation (NRF), the SMART Innovation Centre (Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology), and SPRING’s Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme (TECS). It established corporate headquarters in Cologne in Spring 2012 and continues to run operations in Singapore.

About High-Tech Gruenderfonds
High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through prototyping and to market launch. Typically, High-Tech Gruenderfonds invests EUR 500,000 in the seed stage, with the potential for up to a total of EUR 2 million per portfolio company in follow-on financing. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group, as well as fourteen industrial groups of ALTANA, BASF, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE Color, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gruenderfonds has about EUR 565,5 million under management in two funds (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 293,5 million HTGF II).

Press Contact:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Stefanie Zillikens – Marketing & Communications Manager
Schlegelstraße 2 – 53113 Bonn
phone: +49 228 823001-07 – fax: +49 228 823000-50
s.zillikens@htgf.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de