Washington Editor

Zyomyx Inc. raised $10 million in a private round of venture financing.

Proceeds will support the firm's sales and marketing efforts and help with the cost of scaling up manufacturing operations, Carol Tillis, Zyomyx's director of finance, told BioWorld Today.

The privately held, Hayward, Calif.-based firm founded in 1998 develops and commercializes protein analysis tools that help scientists perform multiplexed and quantitative protein-expression profiling while conserving biological samples.

Prior to the 2003 introduction of its flagship product, called the Human Cytokine Biochip, Zyomyx completed a $27 million Series E financing that was expected to financially carry the firm through 2004. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 1, 2002.)

While Tillis would not release specific details about Zyomyx's books, she said the $10 million round likely would take the company through the next 12 to 18 months.

To date, Zyomyx has raised $102 million. The company employs 80 to 85 people.

Zyomyx's Human Cytokine Biochip is a fully validated assay set that integrates immunoassay principles and microarray technologies to provide protein profiling of 29 cytokines. The firm's Protein Profiling Biochip System is a platform that allows fully automated and optimized protein-expression profiling.

Later this year, Zyomyx plans to introduce its new Murine Cytokine Biochip, as well as others.

The company has a number of high-profile customers including the likes of London-based GlaxoSmithKline plc and Strasbourg, France-based Aventis SA, both purchasers of the protein-profiling system.

Also, in an announcement late last year, Zyomyx said the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., selected the protein-profiling system for its research into ocular disease.

The latest round of financing was led by Credit Suisse First Boston Private Equity, of New York. Existing investors, including Alloy Ventures, of Palo Alto, Calif.; Lilly BioVentures, the venture capital unit of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.; Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management, of San Francisco; Mediphase Venture Partners, of Newton, Mass.; and Bio*One Capital Pte. Ltd., the dedicated Biomedical Sciences investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, also participated.