Genomica placement raises $13.6M for software efforts
By RANDALL OSBORNE
Healthcare InfoTech Staff Writer
Genomica Corp. (Boulder, CO), which develops pharmacogenomics software, raised $13.6 million in a private placement of Series B convertible preferred stock.
"This, with our revenues, will take us well into 2000," said Thomas Marr, president and chief scientist of privately held Genomica. "We’re doing some refinement of existing software, and working in some new areas."
The company’s lead software system is called Discovery Manager, and Genomica has licensing deals with Glaxo Wellcome (London) and Oxagen (Abingdon, UK)
Genomica’s system lets investigators focus on several areas at once, unlike other software programs, which focus on a single aspect of gene discovery typically, sequence analysis.
Population genetics and epidemiology tools allow for pedigree management, examining how a disease is distributed in a family. Associated phenotypes and genotypes can be stored. Genetic and physical mapping tools let researchers visualize and analyze complex relationships in data sets, and algorithms in the sequence analysis area provide for comparisons between self-generated and stored database sequences.
"The approach is catching on, and its utility is becoming available to a broader range of users," Marr said, adding that a deal will be disclosed shortly with a leading instrument maker.
The financing was managed by Punk, Ziegel and Co. (New York). New investment groups included The Kaufmann Fund and Anvers LP (both New York). Previous investors taking part in the financing were Falcon Technology Partners (Devon, PA) Invesco Global Health Sciences Fund (Denver); ARCH Venture Partners (Chicago); and Boulder Ventures (Boulder, CO).
Genomica raised $7 million in October 1997 with some of the same investors, but it "took quite a while" to engineer the most recent financing, Marr said.
"All [last] fall the market was just awful, and then things picked up and we got several big investors," he said.
The company was established in 1996 by Marr to commercialize products he and others developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cold Spring Harbor, NY).
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