MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Xcellerex, Inc. announced today that it has completed a $20 million Series B financing, raising a second tranche of $11 million, to accelerate the commercialization of its disposable manufacturing technology for vaccines and biotherapeutics. SCG Group and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers led the round. In connection with the financing, Kleiner Perkins Partner, Thomas Monath, M.D., has joined the Xcellerex board of directors.
Xcellerex is commercializing a highly innovative, modular and scalable manufacturing platform, FlexFactory™, which combines single use, disposable components and production-scale disposable stirred tank bioreactor systems (XDR™). The use of disposable components provides the flexibility to produce multiple products at a common facility, and to establish manufacturing capacity rapidly at dramatically lower costs than traditional fixed tank, hard-piped facilities. Along with its high throughput process development and formulation technologies, Xcellerex provides a fully integrated manufacturing approach with potential across the full range of cell production types. In addition, the portability of the FlexFactory technology enables distributed manufacturing to provide local drug supply capability.
Mike Masterson, Xcellerex’s CEO, commented, “The financing is an important endorsement of our progress in developing the FlexFactory™. We have built a customer base of top tier pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The funds will allow us to expand our commercial efforts in the vaccine and biotherapeutic markets.”
He noted, “The addition of Tom Monath to our board provides us with great expertise in vaccine development and manufacturing.” Prior to Kleiner Perkins, which he joined in 2006 as Partner, Pandemic Preparedness and Biodefense Fund, he had a distinguished career at Acambis as Chief Scientific Officer, and previously, at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The company’s technology and business model meet the growing demand in the biopharmaceutical industry for more flexible and cost-effective manufacturing,” said Dr. Monath. “With its transformational FlexFactory platform, Xcellerex can meet the urgent need for rapid, flexible manufacturing technology to address emerging disease threats and bioterrorism, as well as expanded immunization against seasonal influenza.”
The company’s business model provides companies with the ability to develop and validate a biologic manufacturing process at Xcellerex and for Xcellerex to ship a validated manufacturing system to a desired site and restart it, with significantly reduced technical and validation burdens.
“Over the past year, we have made great progress in validating our FlexFactory technology,” said Parrish Galliher, Xcellerex’s Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer. “We began GMP production in 2006 for clinical trials and have more customers lined up for production in 2007 and beyond.”
About Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Since its founding in 1972, KPCB has backed entrepreneurs in over 475 ventures, including AOL, Align Technology, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq Computer, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Lotus, LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, VeriSign and Xilinx. More than 150 of the firm’s portfolio companies have gone public. Many other ventures have achieved success through mergers and acquisitions. Additional information can be found at www.kpcb.com.
About Xcellerex, Inc.
Xcellerex, Inc. provides next generation manufacturing services and systems for biotherapeutics and vaccines based on proprietary, single use, disposable component technology. The company’s disposable, modular approach, which represents a new paradigm in biomanufacturing, dramatically enhances flexibility to make process changes quickly and enables manufacturing capacity to be deployed rapidly at significantly lower costs than traditional single use, fixed facilities. Xcellerex’s top quality contract manufacturing services include: cell line creation, process development and GMP manufacturing. The company’s products and technology include the FlexFactory™ manufacturing system, a complete, turnkey, modular production train; XDR™ stirred tank disposable bioreactor systems at 1,000L working volume; XDM™ stirred tank mixing systems, and PDMax™, a high throughput process development service platform. Xcellerex is based in Marlborough, MA. Learn more about Xcellerex at www.xcellerex.com.
Contacts
Xcellerex, Inc. Mike Masterson, 508-480-9235 Chief Executive Officer or
RMG Associates, LLC Robert Gottlieb, 857-891-9091
