SEATTLE, Nov. 28, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arzeda, The Protein Design CompanyTM, today announced that it has officially closed its Series A funding round with a total investment of $15.2 million.
The company raised an additional $3.2 million since announcing an initial $12 million raise on July 20. Additional investors in the Series A include Universal Materials Incubator Co., Ltd. (UMI) and Casdin Capital, LLC. They join Series A lead investor OS Fund and Bioeconomy Capital, Sustainable Conversion Ventures, and Azeda’s seed investor, WRF Capital. Arzeda’s board now includes Jeff Klunzinger, Co-Founder and General Partner at OS Fund.
The Series A funding will expand the throughput capacity of Arzeda’s proprietary protein design platform and product development pipeline, with a focus on delivering novel proteins and biological pathways that are ready for commercial production. The integration of design and commercial-scale production will enable Arzeda’s partners to harness the potential of synthetic biology to produce virtually any chemical for any need.
“We are pleased to welcome Universal Materials and Casdin to this round of investment,” said Klunzinger. “Arzeda is one of the few synbio companies that has already shown that their technology can deliver extraordinary results. The enhanced capabilities Arzeda is building now will impact nearly every economic sector that depends on industrial chemistry.”
“Arzeda’s technology will undoubtedly revolutionize how chemicals and many other materials are produced,” said Yosuke Yamamoto, Director, Universal Materials Incubator Co., Ltd. “The precision of protein design and Arzeda’s commitment to scaling their solutions to industrial applications will bring synthetic biology into the mainstream sooner than anyone expected.”
Arzeda’s advanced protein design technology can deliver revolutionary new production pathways for a wide range of valuable chemicals and materials, including many that have previously been impossible to produce. The company has already successfully developed proteins for global manufacturers, such as DuPont, Mitsubishi Chemical, INVISTA and others to improve crop yield and resilience, increase the performance and sustainability of advanced polymers, reduce the cost of producing high-value food ingredients, and more.
“We believe that the tight integration of computational protein design and scale-up capabilities will result in a cascade of synthetic biology innovation, creating superior performance and financial returns for any market that depends on chemical production,” said Alexandre Zanghellini, co-founder and CEO of Arzeda. “The list of markets that will be touched by these innovations is long, from agriculture and advanced materials, to specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals.”
The close of the Series A comes just as Arzeda is gaining even greater traction in the synthetic biology and bioeconomy markets. Arzeda was ranked Number 6 in this year’s 40 Hottest Companies in the Bioeconomy list by Biofuels Digest, jumping 21 spots from its 2016 ranking. The company also recently announced a new partnership with TeselaGen, a leading provider of cutting-edge DNA design software, that will dramatically improve the efficiency and speed of Arzeda’s ability to create new proteins, enzymes and chemicals.
More information about Arzeda is available via the web at: https://arzeda.com/
About Arzeda
Since 2008 Arzeda has been harnessing the power of computational and synthetic biology to create new enzymes and chemical products that can compete on performance, cost and sustainability. In partnership with Fortune 500 companies and industrial leaders, the company has developed a portfolio of enzymes and specialty chemicals for polymers, advanced materials and health and nutrition products. Arzeda's proprietary platform and validation process rapidly create "cell factories" that can be used at an industrial scale to solve problems and create opportunities that otherwise would be impossible.
More information is available at www.arzeda.com.
About OSFund
The OS Fund is a venture firm. We invest in entrepreneurs commercializing breakthrough discoveries in genomics, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, precision automation, and new materials development. The companies we believe will be disproportionately successful are building tools that lower barriers to discovery in our specific areas of focus, helping decrease the overall risk of pursuing breakthroughs in the process.
To learn more, please visit: http://osfund.co