Tennessee Funders Partner With Battelle; UK Genomics Services Provider Spins Out

A group of eastern Tennessee investors has organized with the goal of creating a $35 million venture capital fund, Innovation Valley Partners, targeting early-stage high technology companies nationally.

Battelle Ventures, a $150 million fund based in Princeton, NJ, will manage the group's investments. Battelle Ventures is organized to commercialize technologies emerging from Battelle-managed national labs, such as Tennessee-based Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and others.

The managers of Cambridge, UK-based Geneservice have completed a buyout of the company from its parent, Medical Research Council, a government funded agency.

The 25-employee company will operate as a genomic reagents and provider of services that include sequencing, genotyping, microarray expression analysis and whole genome amplification.

The MRC spinout lists 900 active customers including many of the large academic institutes in the US and UK as well as pre-clinical R&D labs in the biotechnology sector.

"We found that venture capitalists simply were not interested in us as a products and services company,” Tom Weaver, the company's CEO, told UK Business Weekly. “We have a viable commercial proposition in place – we have been breaking even for a number of years within the MRC – and we are now in a position to build a profitable business.”

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.The deal was partially financed by Lloyds TSB Corporate Technology & Life Sciences team, Geneservice said.