Mass High Tech - December 16, 2009

Biocius Life Sciences spinout complete
Mass High Tech

Biocius Life Sciences is now operating as an independent company, following its formation in November by Woburn biotech BioTrove Inc. and its subsequent spin-out.

Biocius, also based in Woburn, was created to hold BioTrove’s RapidFire intellectual property separately from Carlsbad, Calif.-based Life Technologies Corp. (Nasdaq: LIFE), which is acquiring BioTrove. As a result of the spinout, all BioTrove RapidFire business unit employees now work for Biocius.

Biocius, which is being led by chairman and CEO Jeffrey Leathe, the former chief financial officer of BioTrove, lists its backers as Catalyst Health Ventures, Excel Venture Management, Fletcher-Spaght, CB Health Ventures, Vox Equity Partners, Echelon Ventures and BioFrontier Partners.

The RapidFire mass spectrometry platform is designed to enable the acceleration of drug discovery and pipeline decisions.

Biocius derives its names from the Greek word for “life” (“Bio”) and the Latin word for “faster” (“ocious”).