For Immediate Release: 2/20/2008

Affomix Corporation Closes $7M Series A Preferred Venture Financing Round

New Haven, Conn. – Biotechnology firm Affomix Corporation announced today that it has completed a $7 million Series A Financing.  New investors Four Seasons Ventures and Connecticut Innovations joined founding investor Elm Street Ventures in the financing.  Affomix has an automated approach for obtaining very large numbers of antibodies useful in the diagnosis of disease and development of therapies. 

“My co-founders and I are delighted with the Series A Financing.  The strong enthusiasm of the investment syndicate reinforces our determination to fundamentally change the ways in which commercially valuable antibodies are identified and utilized,” said Michael I. Sherman, Ph.D., president of Affomix.

Due to the speed and efficiency of the methods being implemented by Affomix, the Company expects to obtain antibodies against hundreds or even thousands of protein targets with the time and effort that it typically takes with conventional approaches to generate antibodies against one or a few proteins.  With very large “libraries” of such antibodies in hand, each selected for the ability to bind tightly and selectively to its designated target protein, it will be possible for the first time to accurately perform simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analyses of thousands of different proteins.

Véronique Bardach, managing general partner of Four Seasons Ventures, stated “Four Seasons is very proud to partner with a company we believe will not only revolutionize proteomics research, but will allow for sweeping improvements in the understanding of large-scale biology.”

“Current methods for developing monoclonal antibodies are often tedious, time-consuming and expensive.  The technologies that Affomix is developing are expected to dramatically shorten the time and expense required for the generation of antibodies suitable for research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications,” said Robert Bettigole, managing partner of Elm Street Ventures.

“Connecticut Innovations is committed to helping Affomix grow within the State of Connecticut,” said Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations.  Longo continued, “Its highly credible team of founders, including two Yale University professors as well as seasoned, ‘serial’ entrepreneurs as president and head of research, gave CI the confidence to invest.”