Berlin, 20th September 2010 – SJ Berwin has advised NRW.BANK.Venture Fonds on the financing of biotechnology firm Protagen AG. In total, Protagen AG has raised EUR 10 Million of funding in this second round of financing for the targeted expansion of the business unit Diagnostics.
The successful fundraising was facilitated by the participation of new investor NRW.BANK.Venture Fonds, Düsseldorf. In addition, the existing investors, MIG Fonds, Munich, S-Capital Dortmund, S-Venture Capital Dortmund and KfW, Bonn, contributed significantly to this financing.
NRW.BANK ist the state development bank of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Its mission is to support its owners - the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia as well as the Regional Associations of Westphalia-information: www.nrwbank.de.
Protagen AG is an international leading specialist in the fields of in-vitron diagnostics an GMP-compliant protein
analysis. The innovations of Protage are UNIarray®, a technology platform for the development of novel serum based diagnostics, as well as UNIchip®, a versatile product family of protein microarrays for faster development of antibodies. For more information: www.protagen.de.
SJ Berwin has been legal adviser to NRW.BANK.Venture Fonds for many years. Among others the law firm has already advised NRW.BANK.Venture Fonds as well as others investors regarding the sale of DIREVO Biotech AG to Bayer HealthCare AG (with a transaction volume of EUR 210 Million).
Advisers NRW.BANK.Venture Fonds:
SJ Berwin: Frank Vogel (Lead Partner, Corporate, Berlin), Katja Thümmler (Associate, Corporate, Berlin), Gunter Franzke (Partner, Financial, Berlin), Corina Hackbarth (Associate, Tax, Munich), Christopher Maierhöfer (Associate, IP/Commercial, Berlin), Golo Weidmann (Associate, Labour, Frankfurt)