Date: Jan 22, 2012 Author: Timothy Hay Source: Dow Jones (
click here to go to the source)
Investors in emerging medical technologies have grown used to putting money behind sophisticated digital medical devices, life-saving new drugs and diagnostics that give scientists a bird's-eye view of the progression of diseases.
But in 2013, investors will get the chance to support a truly new and novel medical tool that is expected to help medical researchers: a 200-pound pig with serious coronary artery disease.
"Gene-editing" startup Recombinetics Inc. has raised $250,000 of a Series A round that the company hopes will reach $2 million, Chief Financial Officer Justin Zenanko said. The funding was provided by undisclosed angel investors, and the St. Paul, Minn.-based company aims to raise the balance from angels as well.
Animals bred with serious medical conditions are of great clinical value to pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, contract research organizations and universities, all of which are vying to come out with new treatments for the conditions, Mr. Zenanko said.
"We are tailor-making pigs with the same genotype as [these customers'] patient populations have," he said. "Pigs have 91% of the same genetics as humans."
The company, which raised $1.3 million from undisclosed angels before it began raising its Series A, developed its gene-editing technology in a lab in St. Paul, the CFO said.
The company begins with a DNA sample reaped from a healthy farm animal, he said. Recombinetics then manipulates the sample, adding and activating genes that predispose an animal to coronary artery disease.
The sample is then re-introduced into a healthy animal, a process done with one of the company's business partners located in Wisconsin. When the animal gives birth, its offspring is prone to atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.
Pre-programming pigs to suffer from such a condition is a huge shortcut for medical researchers, Mr. Zenanko said, who today often rely on getting such results the old-fashioned way: getting them to eat nothing but fatty foods for several years. The process is costly, time-consuming and often ineffective, he said.
Recombinetics hopes to ramp up production to 600 diseased pigs per year by 2016.
The company, Mr. Zenanko said, has also raised about $1 million in non-dilutive funding from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S.D.A.
As a platform technology, Recombinetics will be able to breed pigs with other serious medical conditions as well, the CFO said. The company is currently working on gene-editing technology that will give pigs colon cancer, so that researchers can speed up trials of potential cures for the condition.
Recombinetics has been raising the round at a pre-money valuation of $8.2 million, and expects to close the Series A with a post-money valuation of $10.2 million.
http://www.recombinetics.com
