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Great Point Partners Exits Portfolio Company Bionova Scientific
INTRODUCTION
GREENWICH, CT, and FREMONT, CA June 1, 2022 – Great Point Partners, a Greenwich, CT-based health care investment firm, announced today that it had sold its portfolio company Bionova Scientific, a biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (“CDMO”) specializing in the development and manufacturing of recombinant protein therapeutics, to a U.S. subsidiary of Asahi Kasei Corp. of Tokyo. Under Great Point’s ownership, the Company grew revenues over 100% per year and opened a 57,000 sq. ft. GMP biologics manufacturing facility to provide clinical and commercial production for clients, scaling Bionova’s capacity and capabilities.
Bionova CEO Darren Head said, “This is my third time as CEO of a Great Point Partners portfolio company and each time we have created exceeded the goals we set for ourselves.” Head continued, “I am proud of the work we did to respond to market demand by significantly expanding Bionova’s ability to work with customers throughout the drug development process.”
Bionova co-founders, Chief Scientific Officer Amy Kong and Chief Technology Officer Chung Chun added, “We are amazed at how far Bionova Scientific has come since our modest beginnings and grateful for the partnership with Great Point Partners that enabled us to reach this point. This acquisition is an endorsement of Bionova’s science-first, client-focused model and is a testament to the great work of our amazing team.”
Noah Rhodes, Managing Director at Great Point Partners commented, “We first reached out to Amy and Chung about a partnership when the Company had great potential but was capital constrained., We were impressed with their scientific expertise and vision for the future.. With Darren leading the business over the last two years and Amy and Chung continuing to foster the company’s science-first culture, we were able to build a world-class CDMO. We were impressed with Asahi Kasei’s similar commitment to culture and quality and are excited to watch the Company continue to grow under their stewardship.”
ABOUT GREAT POINT PARTNERS
Great Point Partners, founded in 2003 and based in Greenwich, CT, is a leading health care investment firm with 30 professionals, investing in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. GPP is currently making new minority and majority private equity investments from GPP III. Great Point manages $1.7B of capital (including GPP IV which has been closed but not been activated and co-investments on behalf of LPs) in its private funds and public life sciences equity strategy (BioMedical Value Fund). Great Point Partners has provided growth equity, growth recapitalization, and management buyout financing to more than 200 growing health care companies. The private equity funds invest across all sectors of the health care industry with a particular emphasis on biopharmaceutical services and supplies, alternate site care, medical device contract manufacturing and information technology enabled businesses. The firm pursues a proactive and proprietary approach to sourcing investments and tuck-in acquisitions for its portfolio companies.
ABOUT BIONOVA SCIENTIFIC
Founded in 2014, Bionova offers world-class biologics CDMO services built on a foundation of strong process development and analytical science with a staff that brings decades of experience in late stage and commercial launch projects. We firmly believe that a robust, well-understood process and well-characterized molecule are critical cornerstones of your molecule’s success. Our upstream PD group, with more than 60 benchtop bioreactors, offers a breadth and depth of capability typically found at only the largest CDMO’s. Bionova takes an expansive view at solving client process problems. In 2021, Bionova opened a 57,000 sq. ft. GMP biologics manufacturing facility to provide clinical and commercial production for clients. The fully single-use facility is located within Bionova’s headquarters, adjacent to existing process development and analytical laboratories, and is optimized for multi-product manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies and other recombinant proteins.