Antibody discovery startup Adimab of Lebanon, N.H. said Thursday, Oct. 1 it has closed a fourth round of venture funding with Google Ventures as the lead investor.

It's the first life-science investment for the venture arm of the Internet search behemoth, but officials would not disclose the size of the round. Adimab CEO Tillman Gerngross called the dilution"minimal" and said it was in the low single digits--a figure not disputed by a Google spokesperson. (The size of Adimab's previous rounds of funding--the most recent of which occurred in late 2008--were also undisclosed.)

Google Ventures' Bill Maris, who worked in neuroscience research before moving to finance, is joining the Adimab board as a result of the recent investment. He was not available for comment.

Adimab has created a platform for the discovery of monoclonal antibodies by re-engineering yeast to behave like human B-cells, effectively creating a synthetic human immune system to present fully human antibodies--not fragments--on the surface of the yeast.

The firm uses massive computational power to model the human immune system and build libraries of antibodies in silico. Those libraries are translated into synthetic DNA by an outside firm and then engineered into yeast.

There's no direct link between Adimab's bioinformatics and Google Ventures' parent and sole limited partner, Google. But Gerngross said the two sides have a "joint vision" of how to use computational power to discover drugs. He said there would be "interactions" between Adimab and Google beyond the investment but declined to elaborate.

Unlike many other antibody platform companies, Adimab is content with its role as a discovery engine, and has no ambitions to take its own molecules into clinical development. According to Gerngross, such efforts are rarely capital efficient. "Look how much those companies have to raise before they hope to get bought for three, four or $500 million," he said.

Moreover, insists Gerngross, there is a lot of value in antibody discovery. "We don't have the expertise to do drug development. Being a discovery and a development company is an inherent conflict," he said.

Adimab is Gerngross's second start-up. He sold his previous firm GlycoFi, a yeast-based manufacturing platform for monoclonal antibodies, to Merck in 2006 for $400 million, after raising about $35 million. It was a "Fourteen-fold return from money-in to value at the end," said Gerngross. "There's no way to do that if you develop your own programs."

Gerngross called the Google-led round a "sideshow" to Adimab's efforts, saying the firm doesn't really need the cash but decided after multiple inquiries this summer to bring in a new investor. It chose Google from three finalists. In addition to Google, existing investors Polaris Ventures, SV Life Sciences, OrbiMed Advisors and Borealis Ventures also participated in the round.

The deal brings Google Ventures' portfolio to seven companies. The fund advertises itself as a financial, not strategic, corporate investor.

As he did in the June issue of START-UP, Gerngross said Thursday that privately-held Adimab is close to cash-flow positive (Also see "Adimab Inks Merck, Roche Deals and Banks on the Value of Discovery" - Scrip, 1 June, 2009.). The firm is exploring ways to return cash to investors, including possibly a dividend, a rare event for a venture-backed biotech startup. "You could probably count previous ones on one hand with a few fingers cut off," said Gerngross.

Adimab has signed two deals so far, with Roche and Merck, and expects a "significant" number of deals this fall and early next year.

-Alex Lash (a.lash@elsevier.com)

Adimab's Search Results Lead to Google Ventures

More from Archive

More from Pink Sheet