Hello everyone, 

I’m David Michael, a Managing Partner here at Anzu. This month, I wanted to highlight two of our life sciences companies. First, we want to extend a huge congratulations to Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D., co-founder of our portfolio company InterVenn Biosciences. Bertozzi, alongside fellow scientists Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless, was just awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.  

Bertozzi also won the 2022 Wolf Prize in Chemistry earlier this year for her work on creating a new biochemical field of study and contributing to the understanding of the glycocalyx, a network of cellular molecules important to health and disease. Bertozzi made great strides in understanding the glycocalyx, a dense network of sugar-coated molecules found on the surface of almost every cell, and its role in human health.  

“Her pioneering work has opened up basic drug discovery and therapeutic targets associated with cancer, inflammation, bacterial infection, tuberculosis and most recently COVID-19,” the Wolf Foundation said in a statement about the award.  

Congratulations again to Carolyn Bertozzi and her fellow scientists on this incredible accomplishment! 

Next, I want to highlight ImmunoScape. The firm recently announced a funding round that featured a major investment by new investor Amgen Ventures –the venture arm of the global biopharma giant Amgen. We are delighted that they have endorsed ImmunoScape's technology and business model.

ImmunoScape was born out of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*Star), and has since expanded its operations to the U.S. and established a San Diego laboratory with the help of the Anzu team following our initial investment in early 2020. 

We invested in ImmunoScape because we had conviction about the power of their platform to profile and analyze the human immune system, especially the T-cells, which recognize and kill harmful cells in the body. As our investment proceeded, the company evolved its strategy and began to use its platform as a basis for developing T-cell based therapies, also known as TCR therapies. This avenue has emerged as highly promising and ideally, new TCR therapy candidates identified by ImmunoScape could lead to novel treatments for solid tumors, providing new treatment options for cancer patients and clinicians. 

Over the past several months, the ImmunoScape team has made significant strides in its discovery program and has identified several interesting TCR candidates. The new funding round and new relationship with Amgen Ventures will help ImmunoScape to advance those therapeutic candidates toward the clinic. 

How does ImmunoScape’s technology work? Its “Deep Immunomics” platform is able to simultaneously evaluate tens of millions of T-cells in blood samples from hundreds of cancer patients to identify rare, clinically relevant T-cell clones that are responding to those cancers. The corresponding T-cell receptors (TCRs) are then evaluated and prioritized to build a portfolio of potential TCR-T-cell therapy candidates.

All of this is possible because of the company’s proprietary combinatorial barcoding technology.

They can label each of millions of T-cells with unique “chemical barcodes” while also testing each cell against hundreds of proteins that could be found on the surface of cancer cells. When a match is found, that T-cell and its attached TCR could be a promising candidate for a therapy. In essence, their platform is an efficient way to search for a needle in a haystack—with a result that may positively impact human health. 

The ImmunoScape leadership team has also been out on the road, presenting its latest research and progress. ImmunoScape’s VP of Discovery, Dan MacLeod, Ph.D. recently presented at the 7th Annual CAR-TCR Summit in Boston, and Senior Director of Discovery, Katja Fink, Ph.D. presented at the TCR-based Therapies for Solid Tumors Summit in Boston over the summer.  

We look forward to continuing our work with the ImmunoScape team to take their discovery program and Deep Immunomics technology to the next level and are excited to work alongside the team at Amgen Ventures on these important efforts. 

Thank you,

David

PORTFOLIO COMPANY UPDATES

ImmunoScape Raised $14M to Facilitate the Discovery and Characterization of Cancer-Specific T-Cell Receptors

ImmunoScape, a pre-clinical biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of next-generation TCR-T-cell therapeutics announced that it has raised $14M in new financing. Existing investor Anzu Partners led the round with participation from new investor Amgen Ventures and Singapore-based global investor EDBI.

“We have made significant strides in our discovery program and have identified several compelling clinical TCR candidates using our Deep Immunomics platform,” said Choon Peng Ng, CEO, ImmunoScape. “The new funding will allow us to expedite our development efforts and help us to advance our therapeutic candidates toward the clinic. We are especially delighted that Amgen Ventures has become an investor and we look forward to working with their team to address important unmet medical needs with ImmunoScape’s technology.”

The news was featured in ENDPOINTS, The San Diego Union Tribune, The Business Times in Singapore, and more.  

Liquid Instruments Raised $28.5M to Revolutionize Technology Development with Software-Defined Test Instrumentation

Liquid Instruments, an innovator in precision software-defined instrumentation, announced that it has secured $28.5 million in Series B funding led by Acorn Capital. The round also includes participation from new investors, including Lockheed Martin Ventures and Powerhouse Ventures, in addition to existing investors, Spirit Super/ANU Connect Ventures, MA Growth Ventures, Significant Capital Ventures, and Boman Enterprises. The funding enables Liquid Instruments to accelerate its growth plans, expand its product line and introduce novel services that connect lab measurements directly to the cloud and brings Liquid Instruments’ total funding to more than $50 million. 

“This injection of capital will supercharge our ability to revolutionize the test and measurement industry,” said Daniel Shaddock, CEO, and co-founder of Liquid Instruments. “Our innovative software-first approach provides clear advantages over traditional hardware-based solutions, and this funding strongly positions us to lead this critical industry transformation.”  

The funding news was featured in TechCrunch, The San Diego Business Journal, and more.  

Excision BioTherapeutics Dosed First Participant in EBT-101 Phase 1/2 Trial Evaluating EBT-101 as a Potential Cure for HIV and was Awarded California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Grant

Excision BioTherapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing CRISPR-based therapies intended to cure viral infectious diseases, announced that the first participant has been dosed in the Phase 1/2 clinical trial of EBT-101 for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). The participant was dosed in July 2022, with initial findings indicating EBT-101 has been well tolerated to date. The participant continues to be monitored for safety and is expected to qualify for analytical treatment interruption (ATI) of their background anti-retroviral therapy (ART) in an evaluation of a potential cure. 

EBT-101 is a unique, clinical-stage in vivo CRISPR-based therapeutic designed to cure HIV infections after a single intravenous infusion. EBT-101 employs an adeno-associated virus (AAV) to deliver CRISPR-Cas9 and dual guide RNAs, enabling a multiplex editing approach that simultaneously targets three distinct sites within the HIV genome. This allows for the excision of large portions of the HIV genome, thereby minimizing potential viral escape.

The news was covered by Interesting Engineering and more. 

Excision also announced that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has awarded the company a $6.85 million grant to support the clinical development of the EBT-101 program for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). 

Daniel Dornbusch, Chief Executive Officer of Excision, commented, “The CIRM grant provides further validation for the EBT-101 clinical trial, which is the first ever to evaluate an in vivo CRISPR-based therapy in infectious disease. The grant will provide Excision with important funding to advance the trial and potentially demonstrate the safety and efficacy of removing viral DNA from people affected by the HIV pandemic.” 

GelSight Introduced the GelSight Mini: A Human Resolution Tactile Sensor for Engineers and Scientists

GelSight, a pioneer in tactile intelligence technology, announced the release of its new AI-powered 3D tactile sensor, GelSight Mini. For the first time, GelSight Mini offers superhuman touch resolution to the commercial market, with a compact form factor comfortable for human hands and robust enough for use by robots and cobots. GelSight Mini also provides the fastest artificial intelligence tactile experience on the market, taking just five minutes to deliver sharable results out of the box. 

GelSight Mini is the only human-scale resolution tactile sensor with digital 2D and 3D mapping available to roboticists and broadens sensor capabilities compared to other similar products on the market. The sensor exceeds the spatial resolution of human touch, quickly providing researchers with optimized images of material surfaces that are useful across a broad set of industries. 

The launch was covered in Metrology News, Hackster.io, The Robot Report, and more.   

Voltaiq Introduced Voltaiq Community Edition

Voltaiq, the leading software platform for Enterprise Battery Intelligence (EBI), announced the launch of Voltaiq Community Edition, an open-access environment to visualize, model, simulate, and predict battery performance, and seamlessly share and publish insights across the battery community.   

With the launch of Voltaiq Community Edition, the company seeks to democratize advanced battery analysis, giving a boost to anyone working in, or interested in, the Battery Intelligence ecosystem, and a home for people to collaborate and bring transparency to battery modeling, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and predictive algorithm development.  

Voltaiq Community Edition offers access to Voltaiq’s best-in-class visualization tools, as well as a data science environment to develop machine learning and predictive models in Python or MATLAB. The platform also features a vast, ever-expanding library of cleaned, labeled, open-access data from leading academic and industry groups, addressing a key bottleneck in the battery analytics world — a lack of high-quality data. 

The Detroit News covered the launch, you can see that story here.  

Xendee Released New Features for Effectively Designing Sustainable Communities, Large Facilities, and Utility-Scale Microgrids 

Xendee released a new multi-node feature that enables users to create advanced, interconnected microgrid networks from a constellation of smaller microgrids or DERs that can support up to 25 technology types, including solar PV, battery storage, hydrogen, hydrokinetic and more.  

The multi-node feature enables the use of multiple nodes (a bus bar where multiple technologies or loads can be circuited together) and utilizes real-world location data of each point to optimize the final design and investment strategy. This allows for a more realistic model of communities or campuses and allows energy to be generated, used, and transferred in the most efficient manner. 

The news was covered by Solar Power World and other trade publications. 

6K Additive Announced a Strategic AM Powder Supply Agreement and Recycling Partnership with Freeville, NY-based Incodema3D. 

6K Additive, a division of 6K, a leader in the sustainable production of engineered materials for additive manufacturing and lithium-ion batteries produced from its UniMelt® plasma technology, announced a strategic AM powder supply agreement and recycling partnership with Freeville, NY-based Incodema3D. 

Following increased demand and larger volume orders, predominantly from aerospace and defense customers, Incodema3D sought to secure a domestic AM metals powder supply that met strict quality standards and a solution for recycling their used powder and parts. 6K Additive, through its UniMelt plasma microwave powder production system, can provide high volumes of domestically manufactured powder and a route to sustainably recycle Incodema3D’s used metals through its Powder Buy Back program. 

BioSkryb Genomics and BioXpedia A/S Announced European Partnership  

BioSkryb Genomics, a pioneer in developing scientifically advanced single-cell analysis molecular chemistry and technology, announced a partnership with BioXpedia A/S, a contract research laboratory providing high-quality, cost-effective services to preclinical and clinical researchers. This partnership forms a single source, end-to-end solution for the evaluation of multiomics in single cells supporting unprecedented target identification and therapeutic advancement. 

Jay West, PhD, CEO and Co-founder of BioSkryb Genomics commented, “CRISPR gene editing is revolutionizing the production of novel biologics. Although highly effective, there is a level of risk associated with altering genomic properties, causing unintended consequences. The only way to establish off-target effects is through deep analysis that covers the whole genome and whole transcriptome in a single cell, identifying the mutation and resulting expression. This chemistry will provide the market with confidence in the safety and quality of the newly engineered cells.” 

NTx Named Yesim Roth as Chief Financial Officer

NTx, a life sciences company enabling novel RNA product development, announced that it has appointed Yesim Roth as Chief Financial Officer. In this strategic role on the NTx executive team, Roth will lead financial systems improvements and contribute to organizational strategy as NTx works to accelerate the growth of its biomanufacturing systems and bioinformatics platform.

Roth brings nearly three decades of leadership experience across corporate finance, strategy, financial transformation, and fundraising to NTx. She held CFO and senior finance consultant roles at several venture capital and investment firms in the U.S., such as Alchemy Ventures and CaBo Capital, along with several firms in Istanbul, Turkey, such as Hitay Holding, and Eczacıbası Group, one of the top three international conglomerates in Turkey. While at Eczacıbası Group, she also initiated a new venture for the firm in a B2B industry and led it to become an industry leader within its geographic markets. 

Albuquerque Business First covered the news, along with several other local New Mexico outlets. 

Niron Expanded Management Team with Three Key Technology and Operations Hires

Niron Magnetics, the company pioneering the world’s first high-performance, rare earth-free permanent magnets, announced the expansion of its management team with the appointments of David Northall as Vice President, Global Operations, Carlijn Mulder, Ph.D., Vice President for Magnet Technology, and Peter Ladwig, Ph.D. as Vice President for Nanoparticle Technology

David Northall, Vice president, Global Operations, joins Niron with over 40 years of experience in a wide range of industries and on mega projects around the world with some of the largest players in chemical manufacturing and engineering. This includes constructing and starting up chemical manufacturing facilities for $100M+ and $1B+ projects. He most recently served as the general manager of project engineering and services for SABIC, a global leader in chemicals headquartered in Saudi Arabia.

Carlijn Mulder, Ph.D., Vice President, Magnet Technology joins Niron following a decade with Saint-Gobain, a world-leading materials science company, where she held various leadership positions in R&D and operations. In 2020, she joined the senior leadership team at Sage as vice president for quality and regulatory.

Peter Ladwig, Ph.D., Vice President, Nanoparticle Technology joins Niron following nearly 20 years with TDK Hutchinson Technology. During that time, he held several R&D and operations roles including senior director of technology development and senior director of engineering. Peter led teams that developed a new additive process technology platform and employed it to successfully deliver over a billion units to the hard disk drive industry. 

ANZU UPDATES

Don Rosenberg - Venture Partner

Donald (Don) J. Rosenberg is joining the firm as a venture partner. In this role, Rosenberg will work with portfolio companies as they develop their intellectual property strategies and more broadly support the next generation of transformative technology companies. 

Don Rosenberg has extensive leadership experience at today’s most innovative technology companies. He recently retired as Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary at Qualcomm where he was responsible for overseeing its worldwide legal matters, its global government affairs organization, and the corporate compliance function. During his 14-year tenure at Qualcomm, Rosenberg played a key role in shaping and executing the company’s strategic direction and policy initiatives; regularly engaging with governments throughout the world. Before joining Qualcomm, Rosenberg served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary at Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and prior to that, he was Senior Vice President and General Counsel at IBM (NASDAQ: IBM). Currently, Rosenberg serves as a Fellow in Residence at the Center on Global Transformation in University of California San Diego’s (USCD) School of Global Policy and Strategy, where he focuses on innovation policy. 

ADDITIONAL ANZU AND PC MEDIA COVERAGE

• Anzu Partners was featured in the Washington Business Journal to highlight our new D.C. office space and other firm progress
• InterVenn Biosciences co-founder and CEO Aldo Carrascoso, and Erwin Estigarribia, COO, presented at the 20th Annual Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 in New York, NY
• Excision BioTherapeutics presented at Cantor Fitzgerald’s Cell and Genetic Medicines Conference and the UBS Virtual Biotechnology Private Company Symposium
• ImmunoScape's VP of Discovery, Dr. Dan MacLeod, presented at the 7th Annual CAR-TCR Summit on September 21, 2022 in Boston
• Voltaiq was featured in a piece on The Next Web about preventing lithium-ion battery fires
• Niron Magnetics was featured in a Star Tribune piece about University of Minnesota spin-outs
• Xendee was featured in an EE Power piece about establishing microgrids and in a CleanTechnica piece about cutting commercial emissions through microgrids as a service

WELCOME TO ANZU

Katelyn Griffith, Talent Coordinator

Katelyn joins Anzu Partners as a Talent Coordinator under People Operations, based in Jacksonville, FL. In her role, Katelyn supports the day-to-day talent operations, including scheduling interviews, completing reference checks, and ensuring job postings are active and up to date for open roles within Anzu and its portfolio companies. Prior to joining Anzu, Katelyn was a Financial Systems Analyst with The Haskell Company monitoring and analyzing project system usage and supporting related process improvement for cross-functional teams to optimize efficiencies and promote enterprise adoption of standardized processes and applications.

Kelly Saunders, Executive Assistant

Kelly joins Anzu Partners as an Executive Assistant based out of the Tampa office. She has over 10 years of experience supporting senior executives, and prior to Anzu, she was an Executive Assistant at McKinsey & Company. In her role at Anzu, Kelly will provide Executive support for Anzu Partners leadership, including overseeing all aspects of general scheduling, expenses, travel logistics, shipping and delivery, document management, and other administrative tasks.

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Anzu Partners and our portfolio companies are hiring!

Browse the open roles here and learn more about joining our amazing teams.

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ABOUT ANZU PARTNERS

Anzu Partners is an investment firm that focuses on industrial and life science technology companies with the potential to transform their industries. Anzu works with entrepreneurs to develop and commercialize technological innovations by providing capital alongside deep expertise in business development, market positioning, IP, global connectivity, and operations. For more information, please visit https://anzupartners.com/.