Caprion raises $52.5 million in private placement

Largest private financing for a Canadian biotech company

Caprion Pharmaceuticals (Montreal, PQ, Canada) announced on December 7 that it has raised $52.5 million in the largest ever private placement for an independent Canadian biotechnology company. Investors, led by Yorkton Securities, Fidelity Management & Research, and Ventures West, recognized the company's potential to detect proteins at the sub-cellular level and accelerate the development of new drugs and diagnostics. Caprion's current programs include the first diagnostic products for BSE (Mad Cow Disease) and its human strain Creutzfeldt- Jacob's Disease (vCJD), as well earlier stage diagnostics and therapeutics programs in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

With human genome sequencing complete, proteomics—what proteins do—stands as the next important challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. Caprion combines sub-cellular techniques with large-scale mass spectrometry to create a detailed proteomic database.

"This is an important day for the entire Canadian biotech sector," said Lloyd Segal, president and CEO of Caprion. "This financing puts us on par with key global competitors in proteomics. Historically, efforts of this scale only happen in the United States. Today, however, a blue-chip collection of U.S. and Canadian financial institutions and venture investors have provided us with the critical capital resources we need to compete globally and impact the pharmaceutical drug development industry with some exciting new technologies and innovation."

Edited by Angelo DePalma
Managing Editor, Drug Discovery Online and Pharmaceutical Online
adepalma@vertical.net