Landshut/ Martins­ried — High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), Crea­thor Ventures, KfW and Bayern Kapi­tal have announ­ced to sell their invest­ment in SIRION Biotech GmbH, an inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of viral vector tech­no­lo­gies for the effi­ci­ent deve­lo­p­ment and deli­very of cell and gene thera­pies. SIRION’s services ideally comple­ment PerkinElmer’s Hori­zon Disco­very port­fo­lio, it says. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to regu­la­tory approvals.

For its part, Perki­nEl­mer, Inc, a U.S. chemi­cal and medi­cal tech­no­logy company, has announ­ced that it has reached an agree­ment to acquire SIRION. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the third quar­ter of 2021. In 2007, Crea­thor Ventures, HTGF, Bayern Kapi­tal and KfW jointly inves­ted in SIRION as part of a seed finan­cing round.

Head­quar­te­red in Martins­ried near Munich, SIRION has a total of 50 employees at loca­ti­ons in Germany, France and the USA. The company has built a robust port­fo­lio of licen­sed vector tech­no­lo­gies that are used by more than a dozen major phar­maceu­ti­cal and biotech compa­nies that are inves­ti­ga­ting a total of more than 25 diffe­rent diseases.

“Our team looks forward to working with Perki­nEl­mer as we conti­nue to expand our leader­ship posi­tion in viral vector tech­no­lo­gies for cell and gene therapy. As part of Perki­nEl­mer, we will bene­fit from faci­li­ta­ted access to geno­mic analy­sis, gene editing and base editing tech­no­lo­gies, as well as excel­lent global infra­struc­ture and presence,” said Dr. Chris­tian Thirion, CEO of SIRION.

“We are very proud to have accom­pa­nied the successful deve­lo­p­ment of SIRION. As a seed inves­tor, we are always on the lookout for tech­no­lo­gies where great poten­tial can be seen even before market entry, as well as for highly moti­va­ted foun­ders and teams. All of this applied to SIRION,” says Marco Winzer, Part­ner at HTGF.

“SIRION is an excel­lent exam­ple of how foun­ders and manage­ment teams can deve­lop an inno­va­tive tech­no­logy from early stage in the lab to inter­na­tio­nal tech­no­logy leader­ship toge­ther with expe­ri­en­ced inves­tors. We are very plea­sed to have played an active role in this success story,” says Karl­heinz Schme­lig, Part­ner at Crea­thor Ventures.

“We were very impres­sed by SIRION’s tech­ni­cal and market exper­tise right from the start and have actively supported the company from the begin­ning. We are ther­e­fore very plea­sed about this great success and wish SIRION all the best,” says Roman Huber, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Bayern Kapi­tal.

About SIRION Biotech GmbH
SIRION Biotech was foun­ded in 2005 with the goal of deve­lo­ping a new gene­ra­tion of viral vector tech­no­lo­gies for gene and cell therapy and vaccine deve­lo­p­ment. SIRION deve­lops novel thera­peu­tic viral vectors and lever­a­ges proprie­tary tech­no­logy plat­forms based on lenti‑, adeno- and adeno-asso­cia­­ted viru­ses to acce­le­rate its part­ners’ progress in drug deve­lo­p­ment. www.sirion-biotech.com.

About Crea­thor Ventures
Crea­thor Ventures invests in tech­­no­­logy-driven compa­nies that are advan­cing the auto­ma­tion of indus­try and busi­ness, as well as the perso­na­liza­tion and digi­tiza­tion of health­care. The team curr­ently mana­ges over 30 tech and health­care compa­nies and has funded over 200 compa­nies as a lead or co-lead inves­tor over the past 30 years. More than 20 compa­nies were listed on inter­na­tio­nal stock exch­an­ges. Crea­thor Ventures curr­ently mana­ges a fund volume of over 230 million euros. www.creathor.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 600 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than EUR 3 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,700 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 130 compa­nies. www.htgf.de

About KfW
KfW is one of the world’s leading promo­tio­nal banks. With its deca­des of expe­ri­ence, KfW works on behalf of the German fede­ral and state govern­ments to improve econo­mic, social and ecolo­gi­cal living condi­ti­ons world­wide. In 2020 alone, it has made a funding volume of EUR 135.3 billion available for this purpose. Of this, 33% was spent on climate and envi­ron­men­tal protec­tion measures.

KfW does not have any bran­ches and does not have any custo­mer depo­sits. It refi­nan­ces its promo­tio­nal busi­ness respon­si­bly and almost enti­rely via the inter­na­tio­nal capi­tal markets. In 2020, it borro­wed EUR 66.4 billion for this purpose. It employs more than 6,700 people at its head­quar­ters in Frank­furt am Main, its two bran­ches in Berlin and Bonn, and its subsi­dia­ries KfW IPEX-Bank, DEG and KfW Capi­tal. It is repre­sen­ted at around 80 loca­ti­ons world­wide. www.kfw.de

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and young, inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal curr­ently mana­ges twelve invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 500 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 350 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 290 inno­va­tive tech­­no­­logy-orien­­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. www.bayernkapital.de