caprotec bioanalytics Increases Series B Financing in Second Closing to EUR 5 Million

BERLIN and BURLINGTON, Mass., May 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- caprotec bioanalytics GmbH, a privately held biopharmaceutical company offering the proprietary Capture Compound Mass Spectrometry (CCMS) platform technology for the analysis of small molecule - protein interactions, today announced a second closing of EUR 1 million ($1.4 M) to its Series B financing, increasing total equity for the round to EUR 5 million ($7.2 M). The capital increase was fully subscribed by LBBW Venture Capital GmbH, Stuttgart, joining existing investors Creathor Venture, IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, ERP Startfonds, and well-known private investors.

Prof. Dr. Hubert Koster, CEO of caprotec bioanalytics GmbH, commented, "This additional funding from LBBW Venture will allow us to further leverage caprotec's CCMS technology into additional markets as diagnostics and will put the company in a position to execute several large pharma partnerships at the same time."

Dr. Harald Poth, Senior Investment Manager of LBBW Venture, added, "caprotec's CCMS technology has the potential to solve the most expensive problem in the pharmaceutical industry, the failure of drug candidates in clinical trials due to off-target interactions. With caprotec's functional proteomics platform it is possible to profile small molecule drug - protein interactions, including membrane proteins in the human proteome to reveal possible off-target proteins causing adverse side effects, early in the drug development process and to use that information to structurally optimize the drug candidates."

About caprotec bioanalytics

caprotec bioanalytics GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, Germany with a US subsidiary in Burlington, MA. The company was founded in 2006 by CEO Prof. Dr. Hubert Koster, prominent scientist and entrepreneur, who is also the founder of Sequenom, co-founder of US company Milligen/Biosearch and founder of Biosyntech GmbH, the first biotechnology company in Germany. caprotec focuses on the commercialization of its proprietary Capture Compound Mass Spectrometry (CCMS) technology in the areas of functional proteomics, drug development and development of biomarkers. The company holds a vast portfolio of 41 international patents of which are 21 already granted.

About LBBW Venture Capital GmbH

LBBW Venture is a subsidiary of Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg and invests in Life Science, IT and industrial technology in Germany since more than ten years. Portfolio companies in the Life Science sector are Cellzome, Curacyte Pharmaceuticals, Phenex Pharmaceuticals, mtm laboratories and several fund in fund investments. Most recently the portfolio companies ProbioGen and Sloning were successfully sold.