CombiMatrix Corporation Completes $4 Million Private Equity Financing.BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--August 10, 1999-- CombiMatrix Corporation announced today that it has completed a $4 million private equity financing Equity Financing The act of raising money for company activities by selling common or preferred stock to individual or institutional investors. In return for the money paid, shareholders receive ownership interests in the corporation. . CombiMatrix is developing a unique biochip biochip Small-scale device, analogous to an integrated circuit, constructed of or used to analyze organic molecules associated with living organisms. One type of theoretical biochip is a small device constructed of large organic molecules, such as proteins, and capable of system to offer significant advantages over current products on the market. The CombiMatrix biochips are inexpensively produced on existing semiconductor fabrication lines, eliminating the need for expensive photomasks and robots as well as reducing the investment in capital equipment and clean rooms at the Company. The CombiMatrix biochip system integrates the miniaturization min·i·a·tur·ize tr.v. min·i·a·tur·ized, min·i·a·tur·iz·ing, min·i·a·tur·iz·es To plan or make on a greatly reduced scale. min of semiconductors with new developments in biotechnology and chemistry. The Company's core technology utilizes a unique buffering system to create "virtual reactors" -- tiny chemical flasks the size of a human hair that are separated from each other without glass walls. The CombiMatrix technology synthesizes DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. , peptides and other chemicals in these miniaturized electrochemical electrochemical /elec·tro·chem·i·cal/ (-kem´i-k'l) pertaining to interaction or interconversion of chemical and electrical energies. e·lec·tro·chem·i·cal adj. flasks on a tiny semiconductor chip. CombiMatrix's first application of the chip is in genomics. The Company has also initiated research programs in proteomics and combinatorial chemistry for pharmaceutical research and in new materials for batteries and fuel cells. The Company has received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the core patent on its novel biochip. CombiMatrix was recently awarded a Phase I SBIR SBIR Small Business Innovation Research (program/grant) SBIR Space Based Infra-Red SBIR Speaker-Boundary Interference SBIR Site Backsurface-referenced Ideal Plane/Range (silicon wafers) contract from the Department of Energy to develop microarrays of affinity probes for the analysis of gene probes and a similar contract from the Department of Defense to develop nanode array sensor microchips. Acacia Research Corporation (ACRI), an "incubator" company based in Pasadena, California, owns a 53% equity position in CombiMatrix. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion