Singapore's Cordlife sets up CyGenics, plans Australian capital raising

Singapore-based Cordlife has created a holding company, CyGenics, which will be based in Melbourne, and revealed plans to raise up to $20 million in funding.

Although all three of the company's business divisions have been folded into CyGenics, Cordlife -- which provides tissue harvesting and banking services -- and newly-launched Cell Sciences will remain in Singapore. Cytomatrix, which is developing a three-dimensional growth scaffold on which stem cells can be grown, is tied to Boston by a US Defence Department contract.

According to chief executive Steven Fang, one aim of the restructure is to attract further equity funding -- either private or public. CyGenics has appointed specialist biotech investment bank eG Capital to this end. "We're looking to raise between $15 and $20 million," Fang said.

Clinical trials using CyGenics' stem cell and immunotherapy technologies are slated for later this year in Australia, and the resulting cell therapy business will be launched from Australia. CyGenics plans to prepare investigational new drug applications (INDs) for the FDA for both platform technologies: the ex vivo stem cell expansion technology and the ex vivo T-cell production technology.

T-cells -- critical to the body's immune function -- are depleted in diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. "In the process of producing these T-cells we will use the stem cells of the patient. We take stromal cells and put that into our matrix, and produce a whole repertoire of T-cells that are specific to that patient," said Fang.

"Within the field of T-Cells and immunotherapy, Australia has been leading the field -- this was one of the primary pushes for us."

"The second reason [for our move to Australia] was we had done an assessment to find the best sites for global clinical trial, and the conclusion was Australia provided the best localities. Since then, we've been working with the US FDA and the TGA to initiate Phase I and II clinical trials for our two key platform technologies.

"All of our three companies are revenue-generating, but some of these businesses are more mature than others. Both Cordlife and Cytomatrix break even. [Cell Sciences] has already begun to generate revenue by way of sales of devices for research."

Cell Sciences started the ball rolling this week, announcing a distribution agreement with German cell-cultivation specialist DASGIP. Under the agreement, DASGIP will market Cell Sciences' products in Europe, as well as building Cell Sciences' disposable spinner vessels into DASGIP's cell line cultivation equipment.

Cygenics has appointed Chris Fullerton, currently chairman of Australian-based Health Network Communication, as chairman of CyGenics.