AbSci Secures $5.1 Million in Series A Funding by Phoenix Venture Partners

PORTLAND, Ore., April 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AbSci, a global leader in soluble microbial protein expression has secured $5.1M in Series A financing led by Phoenix Venture Partners (PVP). Funding will accelerate commercialization of AbSci's SoluPro™ protein expression platform for use in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

AbSci's next generation E. coli expression platform, SoluPro™, is capable of producing soluble, active therapeutic proteins at revolutionary high yields. SoluPro™'s performance across a diverse range of protein products, including those traditionally viewed as difficult to express in E. coli, has demonstrated compelling advantages to its industry partners. Funding will be used to support further development and scale-up of SoluPro™ for commercial production of insulin and other therapeutic proteins.

"AbSci is pleased to welcome PVP to the growing AbSci team," said Sean McClain, Founder and CEO of AbSci. "PVP's team is comprised of successful entrepreneurs, whose values, strategic expertise, and alignment with our business model make them an ideal fit to compliment our efforts."

AbSci's technology offers dramatic cost, yield, and manufacturing flexibility improvements to its industrial partners. As the biopharmaceutical industry matures, enhanced manufacturing efficiency is becoming increasingly important both for competitive advantage and enhanced margins, while maintaining affordability to patients. This is especially evident in a commoditized market such as insulin, where the increasing global demand is outstripping production capabilities. AbSci's SoluPro™ platform not only enables dramatically higher protein yields, but also does so in less time than current processes. Moreover, SoluPro™ expresses proteins intracellularly while avoiding appreciable formation of protein aggregates, thereby offering the ability to decouple upstream and downstream processes and simplifying or eliminating post processing steps.

"AbSci's technology enables greater manufacturing flexibility and dramatically more efficient use of existing manufacturing infrastructure," stated Dr. Zach Jonasson, General Partner at PVP, who will be joining AbSci's Board of Directors. These benefits are of significant value to the Biopharmaceutical industry. PVP is excited to work with AbSci to commercialize its revolutionary expression platform.

About AbSci
AbSci is a global leader in cutting-edge protein production technologies committed to reducing costs in the biopharmaceutical industry. The company's SoluPro™ expression platform achieves revolutionary yields of soluble and active protein product across a diverse range of targets. AbSci's unique approach accelerates drug discovery timelines, increases manufacturing efficiencies, and drastically reduces costs for the biopharmaceutical industry. For more information, please visit www.abscibio.com.

About Phoenix Venture Partners
Phoenix Venture Partners (PVP) is a leading venture capital firm that invests in and partners with entrepreneurs to commercialize breakthrough materials science innovations. PVP's team has a track record of founding, building and investing in successful materials science start-ups. The firm's investment strategy is flexible and predicated on assisting entrepreneurs with customer and supply chain partnerships, business development, as well as strategic and operational support. PVP collaborates with a select set of forward-looking global corporations on business development and innovation interests.  PVP is based in Silicon Valley with satellite offices in Singapore and Cambridge, MA.  For more information, please visit www.phoenix-vp.com.

SOURCE AbSci

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http://www.abscibio.com