NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Proteome Sciences said today it has raised £3.3 million ($4.0 million) in new funding.
The company plans to use the money to speed its transition to a contract research business model, and to ensure it has the capacity to meet demand from Thermo Fisher Scientific for its TMT isobaric tagging reagents, to which Thermo Fisher has the license.
The raise consisted of 65,858,100 new ordinary shares sold at a price of 1 pence each and 400,000 new ordinary shares sold at 5 pence each. The company said that £2.3 million of the funds were raised using existing shareholder authority to issue new shares, while the remaining £1.0 million raise must be approved by shareholders at the upcoming shareholder meeting on Nov. 29.
The company recently told GenomeWeb that it is moving towards a more focused business model based on its pharmaceutical services offerings. In an interview, CEO Jeremy Haigh noted that while the company has considerable expertise in a variety of proteomics workflows and a collection of potentially valuable intellectual property, it has struggled to translate these assets into consistent profits. He added that the goal under his leadership is to "try to turn a company that has good IP and good technology but that hasn't really been able to commercialize it that well into something that is properly valued and can start to make proper revenues and a profit."