Date: Jul 03, 2012 Author: Don Seiffert Source: Mass High Tech (
click here to go to the source)
Pressure BioSciences Inc. (PBI) in South Easton has announced an agreement with investors for a new round of $1.2 million to commercialize its pressure cycling technology (PCT) product line, and an upheaval in its board of directors which adds two new members and reduces the overall size from eight to five.
The company said in a statement that it expects to close on the first half of investment by the end of the week. It will consist of the sale of about 120,000 units of a newly-designated series of preferred stock and warrants to purchase Series G common stock. The 17 investors in the initial tranche include all members of the company's new and prior board of directors, all officers of the company, and several existing accredited investors. Additional tranches are expected to close by Aug. 31.
President and CEO Richard T. Schumacher also announced in a statement the reduction in the size of the board from eight to five, saying the five-member board is "a more reasonable and manageable number." As part of the reduction, five of the previous members - Calvin Saravis, Donald Payne, Alan Rosenson, Alan Goldberg, and Gregory Freitag - have stepped down, and two new members have been named: life sciences veteran Vito Mangiardi, recently the COO and deputy director of operations and production at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Joint Genome Institute; and Wall Street veteran Kevin Pollack, managing director at Paragon Capital.
PBI makes lab equipment for biotechnology and pharmaceutical discovery. It holds 13 U.S. patents for it most recent, PCT product line, which extracts nucleic acids, proteins and small molecules from human, plant or animal samples through high pressure.
The company was founded in 1978 as Boston Biomedica Inc. began significant operations 1986, and went public in 1996. In 2004, most of the company was sold and it changed its name to Pressure BioSciences Inc. It now has 13 employees nationwide.
According to the most recent annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported revenues of about $1 million during 2011, down from $1.3 million in 2010, and a net loss of $3 million and $3.1 million for 2011 and 2010, respectively. An independent auditor was cited in the report as having "substantial doubt in (the company's) ability to continue as a going concern due to the risk that (it) may not have sufficient cash and liquid assets at December 31, 2011 to cover (its) operating and capital requirements for the next twelve-month period."
In April, it announced an agreement with life sciences investor Ironridge BioPharma Co. of San Francisco to buy $500,000 in shares of its Series E convertible preferred stock.
