Biolex Raises $6.5m
Biolex Inc. of Pittsboro recently raised $6.5 million in its third round of venture financing.
The financing was led by Franklin Street Capital of Chapel Hill. Intersouth Partners of Durham, Kitty Hawk Capital of Charlotte and the Wakefield Group of Durham also participated.
“We are excited about completing this new round of funding,” said Gabriel R. Cipau, Ph.D., president and CEO of Biolex Inc. “With this funding, we are now well positioned to continue the development of our platform technology. We will also continue to expand the research laboratories and the scale up and purification facilities in our new 30,000-square-foot building.
The funding will help the early-stage protein technology company continue to develop its proprietary rapid-growing aquatic plant system that secretes target proteins for potential human or veterinary medicines or other biotechnology applications. The company has raised a total of $9.1 million in venture funding to date, including a $100,000 loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
“The demand for improved protein production technology is enormous,” said Stuart Frantz, president of Franklin Street Capital. “By some estimates there is a $70 billion market for protein research and development alone. Biolex has the right combination of solid pharmaceutical operations leadership and plant-based genetics ingenuity to revolutionize the entire protein-based biopharmaceuticals industry.”
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