Friday, October 12, 2007

New investor leads latest Xcellerex VC round

A new investor led a Series C venture funding in bioreactor maker Xcellerex Inc. worth $31 million.

Marlborough-based Xcellerex raised the funding to advance the development and commercialization of its manufacturing system and XDR bioreactors for the production of biomolecules, company officials said. Additionally the funding will be used by Xcellerex to develop its own internal biomolecule products.

New investor VantagePoint Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with offices in California, New York and Montreal, led the financing.

VantagePoint partner David Thompson will join the Xcellerex board of directors as a result of the firm's involvement in the funding, officials said.

California-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and SCG Investments, also participated.

Xcellerex is a privately held provider of manufacturing systems for biotherapeutics and vaccines based on its single-use, disposable component technology. It was founded in 2002 by Parrish Galliher, now the company's chief technology officer.

In July, the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Xcellerex two Phase 1 grants worth a total of $13 million to apply its technology to make emergency treatments and vaccines for the U.S. military, the company reported. Xcellerex said the first phase of the overall DARPA program, which is to develop technology to rapidly produce treatments in response to biological threats, is to demonstrate small-scale production of vaccines and antibodies.

The company is collaborating on the first phase of the project with Dowpharma of Midland, Mich., London-based deltaDOT Ltd., and Biopharm Services, which operates offices in Marlborough and the United Kingdom, officials said.