Singulex' existing investors, Fisk Venture and Prolog Ventures were part of the latest financing round totaling $8 million, which was led by a new undisclosed investor. The company also closed a one million dollar financing round from GE Capital and a one and a half million dollar debt financing from Bridge Bank, bringing the total amount raised to $10.5 million.
"Establishing normal protein levels has presented serious hurdles in the advancement of diagnostics for therapy selection, disease diagnosis and preclinical and clinical evaluation of therapeutic candidates. The Zeptx System is engineered to enable life science researchers to obtain quantitative information on normal and abnormal protein levels in any type of biological sample," said Philippe Goix, chief executive officer and president of Singulex. "The financial backing from both new and existing investors will enable us to meet our target commercialization launch of the Zeptx System in the first half of 2007. I am happy to welcome Dr. Urdea, whose commercialization experience in the diagnostics sector will be immensely helpful as we continue to build our Zeptx System portfolio of commercial pharmaceutical partners."
Dr. Urdea was instrumental in directing the molecular diagnostic efforts at Chiron, where he was one of a handful of initial employees and later joined Bayer Diagnostics as senior vice president and acting CSO of the nucleic acid diagnostics division. Leaving Bayer, Dr. Urdea most recently co-founded Tethys Bioscience, a molecular diagnostic company which has installed Singulex' Zeptx system to aid in critical biomarker discovery and validation.
"Singulex' Zeptx System has provided Tethys Bioscience with a robust quantitative biomarker detection system providing scalable assay developments capabilities for measuring proteins in very small volumes and I look forward to continuing my involvement with the company by participating on the Board of Directors," said Dr. Urdea.
Singulex' flagship digital single molecule detection system, the Zeptx System, incorporates a variety of well-established detection and unique immunoassay tagging technologies to create a powerful quantitative system that can measure protein biomarkers in biological samples, including serum or plasma, at concentration levels that have been historically difficult to detect with a high degree of sensitivity, accuracy and precision in under an hour. Singulex is involved in key pilot studies with pharmaceutical partners, where Zeptx technology is being used to monitor biomarkers in clinical samples and to generate clinically useful information.
About Singulex
Singulex develops and commercializes innovative technology solutions that enable disease understanding and management for life science researchers and clinicians. Utilizing proprietary quantitative single molecule detection technology, Singulex develops customized biomarker diagnostic systems that can detect and quantify normal and abnormal protein biomarkers in a variety of biological samples with extreme sensitivity and accuracy. Singulex is currently conducting several pilot studies with academic and molecular diagnostic partners to validate the company's leading digital molecule detection platform, the Zeptx(TM) System, which will be commercially available in the first half of 2007. To learn more about Singulex or the Zeptx System, please visit us at www.singulex.com.
Source: Singulex, Inc.
