NEW YORK, Aug. 29 - A biotech venture capital fund launched in January by Burrill & Company and Bayer Diagnostics has secured half of the $50 million originally slated to close by June.
Steven Burrill, CEO of the eponymous merchant bank, today said the fund is now expected to close by the end of the year.
Bayer Diagnostic and Burrill & Company said they formed the fund, called the Burrill Diagnostics Capital Fund, to back new pharmacogenomic- and proteomic-based diagnostic research.
The fund will focus on high-growth areas such as device miniaturization, pharmacogenomic testing, and non-invasive testing, Bayer Diagnostics president Rolf Classon said in a statement in January.
Burrill and Bayer also mentioned as targets technologies that allow for disease-susceptibility genotyping and tools for genetic stratification of patients in clinical trials.