CellFactors: Bringing the Commercial to Biotech

CellFactors PLC 's failure to raise even the minimum £2.5 million ($4.2 million) of its planned £8 million during the summer of 2002 wasn't particularly surprising: those risk-averse investors that weren't avoiding the sector entirely were certainly not likely to put their money into a young cell therapy play whose product is years from the market. Indeed, cell therapy itself has been out of fashion for half a decade, and the newly heightened ethical and regulatory risks associated with it don't exactly boost confidence. It's hard to find a cell therapy company with much positive shareholder support, and even the rare stories of such support are hardly reassuring: UK group ReNeuron PLC was whisked back into the private domain by its VC backer, Merlin Ventures, in April 2003, valued at £2 million below cash. (See "ReNeuron: Going Private," In Vivo Europe Rx, May 2003 [A#2003600076].)

CellFactors didn't have a significant VC backer to save it: most of the £4.3 million raised since the company's inception...