THE NETHERLANDS, Dutch biotech company ProteoNic B.V. announces successful completion of a € 6 mln equity financing round led by US-based Fairbanks Investment Fund (FIF), with existing shareholders participating. The funding will be used to accelerate commercialization of ProteoNic's proprietary UNic™ recombinant protein yield enhancement technology and expand the company's capabilities in the area of cell line generation and contract services.

ProteoNic's UNic™ technology is applied in the production of industrial enzymes and biopharmaceutical proteins. Application of this technology reduces costs and enables production at economically feasible levels of proteins whose commercial development is hampered by poor expression. UNic™ enhances production efficiency by increasing recombinant protein output per cell at the translational level, while leaving production methods, including cell types and culture methods, completely unchanged.

Mrs Shannon Fairbanks, founder of Fairbanks Investment Fund commented: "I am exited about having entered into this partnership with ProteoNic. The broad applicability of the UNic™ technology across industries places the company in an ideal position for successful commercialization via licensing and partnerships".
Frank Pieper, CEO of ProteoNic added: "The participation by FIF and the continued support of our existing shareholders underline the potential of our technology, and will allow ProteoNic to invest in the role-out and further development of its core business".

About Fairbanks Investment Fund
The Fairbanks Investment Fund is a US-based private equity fund which invests in partnership with the owners of strong European companies: either mid-market companies, often family owned, which seek strategic capital to support their international growth or smaller research-based companies seeking growth capital to develop their patents to serve international market needs.

About ProteoNic
ProteoNic offers products and services for improving recombinant protein expression levels in pharmaceutical and industrial enzyme production platforms. Its proprietary UNic™ technology is used to enhance the translation of messenger RNA (mRNA) resulting in more protein per mRNA. This leads to significantly higher yields and greater manufacturing flexibility, with lower production costs. The company's activities focus on industry-relevant fungal, yeast, plant and mammalian expression hosts, for which it has developed platform-specific products and services. ProteoNic is the winner of the 2010 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Award.