Portfolio News
Primera closes $20 million venture round
Boston Business Journal
Rodney Brown
21 September 2009
Biotechnology concern Primera Biosystems Inc. has closed a $20 million Series C round of financing led by new investor CHL Medical Partners.
A number of the company's previous investors participated in the round, including Abingworth LLP, InterWest Partners, Malaysian Technology Development Corp., MPM Capital, Burrill & Co. and the Invus Group.
Based in Mansfield, Mass., Primera Biosystems does business as PrimeraDx. Primera is a molecular diagnostics company developing a proprietary nucleic acid analysis system, STAR (Scalable Target Amplification Routine), invented by Vladimir Slepnev, Primera's chief scientific officer and co-founder.
Ronald Lennox of CHL Medical Partners will join the company's board of directors as part of the financing, officials said.
Earlier this month, Primera raised $1.5 million in debt financing, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In January of 2008, Primera closed a $21 million Series B round of financing led by U.K.-based Abingworth.
Primera was spun off from Providence, R.I.-based life sciences company Sention Inc. and started out based in Providence before moving to Mansfield in 2006. The company says it plans to seek regulatory approval to sell its STAR platform and assay reagents to the hospital and reference-laboratories markets.
