Pharma

Drug ingredient supplier Therapeutic Proteins gets $8.4M

Biological drug ingredients supplier Therapeutic Proteins Inc. has raised $8.4 million in equity and warrants, […]

Biological drug ingredients supplier Therapeutic Proteins Inc. has raised $8.4 million in equity and warrants, according to a regulatory filing.

The company manufacture recombinant proteins, which it then sells as active pharmaceutical ingredients to drugmakers. Recombinant substances are made by combining genetic material from two different sources.

Therapeutic Proteins was started to create the raw materials for use in generic versions of biotech drugs. After Therapeutic Proteins produces the ingredients, it sends them to drugmakers to formulate, package and sell the pharmaceuticals.

Generic biotechs have been unavailable in America, but that changed with this year’s sweeping health reform law. Health reform cleared the way for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of so-called “biogenerics,” which could one day save the U.S. billions in drug costs.

A provision of reform gives brand-name manufacturers of biotech drugs 12 years of patent protection before makers of biogenerics are allowed to begin selling cheaper versions. The 12-year period is applied retroactively, meaning that some biogenerics could hit the market within a year or two.

Therapeutic Proteins’ CFO Thomas Flynn III (pdf) told the Chicago Tribune that the company expects to have its biogenerics on the market within two or three years.

Of the $8.4 million fund-raise, $7.5 million comes in the form of equity, with the amount in warrants a little more than $900,000. The funding comes from Milwaukee-based venture capitalists Capital Midwest Fund.

Therapeutic Proteins recently moved into a manufacturing facility on the South Side of Chicago on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The company has 13 employees, according to (pdf) an April press release, but expects to add another two-dozen or so by January.

The company recently hired a new CEO, Zafeer Ahmed, a former executive with Chicago-area drugmaker NeoPharm and GlaxoSmithKline.

Flynn, the CFO, didn’t return a call.

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