This story originally ran on July 19.
Courtagen Capital Group has launched a new company, Avantra Biosciences, using the assets of defunct biotech firm Decision Biomarkers that Courtagen purchased in bankruptcy court last December.
Avantra, which incorporated on Dec. 31, 2009, plans to close on a $7 million Series B funding round by the end of July and to begin selling its biomarker-detection platform in early 2011, Elizabeth Holland, spokesperson for Courtagen and Avantra, told ProteoMonitor.
The company will be selling the Avantra Biomarker Workstation – a multiplex, immunoassay-based biomarker detection platform developed by Decision Biomarkers, as well as a variety of assays created for the platform. The company presently has an angiogenesis panel and a cytokine panel for use with the Biomarker Workstation and plans to develop additional panels for use with the instrument.
"We will definitely be launching new panels, new assays. We're evaluating the market research right now," Holland said.
Avantra has seven employees, including several from Decision Biomarkers' R&D division, and is looking to hire a head of assay development, Holland said. The company is currently being run by Courtagen's management team.
Decision Biomarkers filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in US Bankruptcy Court in Boston on Dec. 22, 2009. In documents filed with the court, the company said it had assets of up to $50,000 and liabilities of greater than $1 million but less than $10 million. It listed 90 creditors, including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Fisher Scientific, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Perkin Elmer (PM 01/08/2010).