Boulder biotech PanTheryx company raises $50M

BOULDER — PanTheryx Inc. has landed a $50 million investment from New York-based health investment firm Perceptive Advisors.

The Boulder-based biotechnology company said in a press release this week that the financing will be used to accelerate its pipeline of medical foods and biologic treatments for C. difficle infections and other gastrointestinal tract issues, and to expand the reach of products currently on the market, such as its flagship anti-diarrheal drink mix DiaResQ.

Key to the company’s pipeline is colostrum, the first milk produced by a mammal mother after giving birth. Colostrum contains antibodies and nutrients required for a newborn animal to receive passive immunity to diseases.

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In an interview Friday, PanTheryx CEO Mark Braman said the company is in pre-clinical testing for products in its medical foods pipeline and hopes to start full clinical trials with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of the year, with a to-market date sometime in the first quarter of 2021 if all goes to plan.

Braman also expects to start having pre-clinical trial conversations with the FDA later this year, with products entering clinical trials in the first quarter of 2020.

It’s near impossible to produce a synthetic version of colostrum that has the same strength and qualities that colostrum from cows possess, so PanTheryx acquired APS BioGroup LLC and La Belle Associates Inc., two of the largest colostrum producers in the United States, and built the beginning of the collection process to more than 1,000 farms in the U.S. The colostrum left over from newborn calf feeding is frozen before it’s sent to facilities in Arizona and California to be turned into final products.

Braman estimates that PanTheryx is meeting 70 percent of the global colostrum market demand by itself, and the company has the vertical integration in place to meet additional demand if their products reach shelves.

“We’ve invested a considerable amount of money to make these acquisitions and continue to build that infrastructure, not just here in the United States, but also abroad,” he said.

PanTheryx spokeswoman Kira Cooper said the company plans to split the investment in half between research and development and global commercialization. The company employs 27 people in its Boulder office and 162 overall, but intends to increase staffing to 45 employees in Colorado and 200 overall by the end of the year.

PanTheryx has raised $170 million in funding since being founded in 2007, including a $53 million investment in 2016 from Connecticut-based Pegasus Capital Advisors LP. The company used that funding to launch global marketing for DiaResQ, and to finance the APS BioGroup and La Belle Associates acquisitions. The sale prices for those deals were not disclosed.