Codon Devices Closes $20 Million Series B Financing

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Codon Devices, the Constructive Biology(TM) Company, announced today that it has secured $20M in Series B financing. The round was led by Highland Capital Partners and supported by all previous investors including Alloy Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In conjunction with this transaction, Bob Higgins, Managing General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, will join Codon Devices' Board of Directors.

Mr. Higgins commented, "We are thrilled to join the Codon Devices team as they rapidly scale a technology that is fundamentally transformative to biological research. The Company has already demonstrated a proven track record in delivering significant value to pharmaceutical, academic and industrial customers. We look forward to helping Codon Devices make the era of Constructive Biology(TM) a reality."

"We are excited to have a firm the caliber of Highland Capital Partners join our distinguished group of investors," said John P. Danner, President and CEO of Codon Devices. "We will utilize this significant capital infusion to further industrialize our proprietary BioFAB(TM) production platform, aggressively expand our novel protein and metabolic engineering capabilities, and rapidly globalize our sales and marketing presence. The enthusiasm of our Series B investors to fund Codon Devices recognizes our accelerating market penetration and reaffirms the broad and deep strategic potential of Constructive Biology(TM)."

Noubar Afeyan, Chairman of Codon Devices and Managing Partner and CEO of Flagship Ventures said, "Codon Devices' powerful technology platform will impact every industry based upon biotechnology. By fundamentally re- engineering the workflow of molecular biology and protein engineering techniques, Codon Devices will broadly enable rapid advancements in protein therapeutic discovery and production, agriculture, industrial biotechnology, and renewable energy."

About Codon Devices

Codon Devices, based in Cambridge, MA, is a privately-held biotechnology company focused on enabling commercial applications of synthetic biology. Codon Devices' proprietary synthesis and design technologies improve the productivity, throughput and flexibility of its industrial, pharmaceutical and academic customers in a paradigm shift to what the company calls Constructive Biology(TM). The company's focus is on developing and delivering high-value products and design services in a variety of application areas, including engineered gene libraries, engineered cells that produce novel pharmaceuticals, improved vaccines, agricultural products, and biorefineries for the production of industrial chemicals and energy. Codon Devices' BioFAB(TM) platform uses sophisticated informatics, robotics and sequencing technologies to accurately synthesize genetic codes orders of magnitude more rapidly and cost-effectively than other currently available technology. Codon Devices is currently scaling the platform to design and construct engineered genetic devices hundreds of kilobases to megabases in length.

Founded in 2004 within Flagship Ventures, Codon Devices commenced laboratory operations in March 2005. The company announced a Series A financing round of $13 million in June 2005 and achieved first revenues in November 2005. Investors include Alloy Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Codon Devices' scientific founders include Scientific Advisory Board Chairman George Church, Harvard Medical School; Drew Endy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Joseph Jacobson, MIT Media Lab; and Jay Keasling, University of California, Berkeley.

About Highland Capital Partners

Highland Capital Partners was founded with the mission of helping great people build great companies. Since its inception in 1988, the firm has taken a sector-focused approach to investing in exceptional healthcare, information technology, communications and consumer companies. With over $2.6 billion of committed capital, Highland has invested in and worked to create such firms as Ask Jeeves, Avid Technology, CheckFree, Conor Medsystems, EXACT Sciences, Lycos, MapQuest, Mitotix, Ocular Networks, Odyssey Healthcare, Origin MedSystems, Renal Treatment Centers, Sybase, Telica, US Labs and VistaPrint. For more information, visit Highland's web site at www.hcp.com.

Codon Devices, Inc.

CONTACT: Leda Notchey of Codon Devices, Inc., +1-617-995-7999, or fax617-995-7970; or Peter Steinerman of Steinerman Biomedical Communications,+1-516-374-3031, or fax +1-516-374-2396

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