Seattle's hometown billionaire and biotech entrepreneur Paul Allen is chipping $20 million into a new infusion of cash for Omeros, which also hauled in $5 million from the state's life sciences fund. The money will be used to finance Omeros' quest for new drugs that can hit some 100 potential GPCR targets--a field that backers expect will deliver new therapies for currently "undruggable" targets.
The deal gives Omeros the money it needs to purchase Patobios Limited's GPCR assay technology for about $10.8 million Canadian dollars, with $7.8 million is payable in cash and $3 million payable in Omeros common stock.
As Xconomy points out, Omeros failed to gin the kind of cash it needed from last year's IPO, which floated on a turbulent sea of investor dissatisfaction with biotechs that don't have any product revenue to boast about. So Allen's investment arm, Vulcan Capital, was persuaded to back the developer in exchange for a portion of the revenue that can be garnered from new pacts as well as royalties on future products.
"We see the Omeros GPCR technology as a major disruptive opportunity," Vulcan managing director Steve Hall tells Xconomy's Luke Timmerman. "Paul Allen is not a short term investor. We see potential to yield new innovation and returns over multiple decades."
- check out the Omeros release
- read the story from Xconomy