HTGF and Think.Health Ventures: Series A 3.3 million euros for the growth of PreOmics

Martins­ried — High-Tech Grün­der­fonds and Think.Health Ventures, toge­ther with busi­ness angels, invest 3.3 million euros in a Series A for the growth of PreO­mics in Martins­ried. PreO­mics deve­lops and produ­ces inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies for the preana­ly­tics of samples for mass spec­tro­me­try. Today, sample proces­sing for mass spec­tro­me­try is usually perfor­med accor­ding to home­made proto­cols. These proces­ses are slow, not repro­du­ci­ble, not robust and cannot be auto­ma­ted. These solu­ti­ons are ther­e­fore very time-consum­ing and costly, which can even lead to the loss of valuable samples.

PreO­mics addres­ses these issues through a stan­dar­di­zed tech­no­logy that enables robust and repro­du­ci­ble results in sample prepa­ra­tion. Addi­tio­nally, the proto­cols have a signi­fi­cantly redu­ced workload compared to tradi­tio­nal prac­ti­ces. As part of the seed invest­ment with High-Tech Grün­der­fonds and busi­ness angels, the first products were brought to market and new products were deve­lo­ped. For this purpose, foun­ders Garwin Pich­ler and Nils Kulak have built up a team at the IZB faci­li­ties in Martins­ried and formed part­ner­ships for produc­tion and further deve­lo­p­ment. Think.Health Ventures is now leading another finan­cing round of €3.3 million to support the further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the busi­ness and the deve­lo­p­ment of addi­tio­nal products.

Dr. Garwin Pich­ler, Mana­ging Direc­tor at PreO­mics, said, “Custo­mers world­wide use our tech­no­lo­gies that enable stan­dar­di­zed and effi­ci­ent sample prepa­ra­tion for protein analy­sis and offer a signi­fi­cant cost-bene­­fit advan­tage. With the new capi­tal, we intend to acce­le­rate the expan­sion of global sales with a focus on the U.S. and the deve­lo­p­ment of new products.”

Dr. Fabian Mohr, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF: “We are very exci­ted to co-invest in the Series A to build on the success of the seed round. The company has made a great deve­lo­p­ment and we trust in the leader­ship team for further market expan­sion and product development.”

For Dr. Michael Ruoff (photo), part­ner at Think Health Ventures, the main factor contri­bu­ting to the invest­ment was “the effec­tive solu­tion to a clear problem with posi­tive market feed­back combi­ned with the exper­tise and ambi­tion of the entire team.” “We see great poten­tial with PreO­mics to acce­le­rate drug deve­lo­p­ment for serious dise­a­ses, as their products curr­ently have an outstan­ding market position.”

About PreO­mics
The company was spun out in August 2016 with intellec­tual property from Matthias Mann’s lab at the Max Planck Insti­tute of Bioche­mis­try. Since then, new products have been deve­lo­ped, which have been protec­ted with their own IP. The mana­ging direc­tors Garwin Pich­ler and Nils Kulak are supported by an advi­sory board with a wealth of expe­ri­ence in the life scien­ces. PreO­mics’ mission is to bring the gold stan­dard for preana­ly­tics in mass spec­tro­me­try to market.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of 892.5 million euros distri­bu­ted across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported more than 500 start­ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the hard­ware, soft­ware, life scien­ces and chemi­cal indus­tries. More than €1.9 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in around 1,400 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has now successfully sold shares in 100 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW, the Fraun­ho­­fer-Gesel­l­­schaft and the busi­ness enter­pri­ses ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, Dril­lisch AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, Post­bank, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.

About Think.Health.com
Think.Health invests as a boutique risk-taker in health­care ventures. We conti­nuously seek inno­va­tions and disrup­tive busi­ness models in digi­tal health­care, medi­cal tech­no­lo­gies and health service provi­ders. We typi­cally invest in early stage ventures and growth oppor­tu­ni­ties ranging from € 200k to € 2m. We are an active and hands-on inves­tor and provide strong support to our manage­ment teams.