EMV Capital advises on a restructuring and investment in Vortex Biotech Holdings. Appointment of new Vortex CEO to drive growth.
London, UK, 16th August 2022 – International venture capital investor and adviser, EMV Capital Ltd (EMV Capital), is pleased to announce that it has advised on the restructuring and investment in Vortex Biotech Holdings, a leader in the oncology liquid biopsy market. The company also appointed industry veteran Paul Jones to drive growth.
EMV Capital advised Deeptech Disruptive Growth Investments (Deeptech) on its acquisition of Vortex, Inc. in 2019 for £113,000, following c.$30m of previous investments taking its sophisticated liquid biopsy platform to first sales. Since then, EMV Capital has actively led the turnaround of the business, providing investment and incubation support services, advising on c.£3.5 million of debt finance facilities, a board restructuring, and the co-location of the business to the UK, whilst maintaining its US Bay Area operations.
The restructuring sees the Vortex US and UK businesses being held by a UK holding company, Vortex Biotech Holdings, and secures £300,000 equity investment in the company and a £2 million loan facility from NetScientific PLC group (parent company of EMV Capital). Additionally, Vortex has recently appointed Paul Jones as its new Chief Executive Officer. Paul has previously worked at Illumina, Inc., the global leader in genome sequencing, where he was the Head of Population Genomics. He led the team that created, developed and actively managed large-scale programmes across more than 50 different countries. Prior to this, Paul was the founding CEO of Genomic Enterprises, the arm of Genomics England responsible for all commercial aspects of the 100,000 Genomes Project. Paul has also held roles as Director and Leader of Global Life Sciences at Cisco and Head of Global eMarketing & eSales at Novartis. Early in his career he was a Management Consultant at PwC, focused on life sciences. Paul completed a Certificate in Private Equity at Imperial College, London in 2022, an MBA from the University of Sheffield, in 1992, and an undergraduate degree majoring in physiology in 1989.
Vortex is focused on developing its position in the multi-billion dollar oncology liquid biopsy market, which is estimated to grow at 14% CAGR by 2030*. Vortex’s core technology allows for the capture and isolation of high quality Circulating Tumour Cells (“CTCs”) from blood samples. Paul will lead Vortex’s growth strategy around this core technology with the aim of developing it into an industry leading platform that will help accelerate the translation of research insights into the clinic and help deliver to an affordable population health agenda.
Vortex’ VTX-1 platform has been placed and used for KOL published research in leading University and Research centres in the US, UK and EU, including UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Ghent University (Belgium), University of Maryland, and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. In addition, Vortex is now seeing growing interest from pharma and biotech clients. The company has developed several workflow integrations of the VTX-1 instrument with third party instruments, opening further commercialisation opportunities.
Dr Ilian Iliev, Managing Director of EMV Capital commented: “We are pleased to have advised Deeptech and Vortex on the rapid growth of the Vortex group over the past three years, and to have advised on the further investment by NetScientific. The recent restructuring and investment positions the group well for continued development, and we look forward to continuing our work with Vortex on its growth journey in this rapidly developing and maturing market. This fits well with EMV Capital (and NetScientific Group’s) strategy for pro-active investment management, trans-Atlantic growth, and focusing on transformative technology companies in high impact sectors.”
Paul Jones, CEO of Vortex Biotech Holdings, added: “I’ve worked for many years to enable a vision of affordable population health. Recent developments in liquid biopsy will enable earlier disease detection, support personalised medicine and allow far easier ongoing disease monitoring – making this vision a realistic prospect even in the short term. It is a privilege to be given the opportunity to lead Vortex and show how we can make a real difference for patients suffering from cancer across the world.”
---------------
*Footnote:
Liquid Biopsy Market Size Worth USD 26.2bn bn by 2030 at 14.% CAGR - Report by Precedence Research. Dec 14th, 2021 | Source:
---------------
For more information, please contact:
EMV Capital Ltd
Dr Ilian Iliev, Managing Director
Caroline Clopet, Head of Marketing & Communications
caroline.clopet@emvcapital.com
About EMV Capital Ltd (www.emvcapital.com)
EMV Capital Ltd (EMVC), a subsidiary of AIM-quoted NetScientific PLC, is a London-based award-winning investor focused on B2B companies in the healthcare, sustainability and industrials sectors with investments in the UK, US and Israel. EMV Capital develops a customised investment strategy for each client, combining its network of investors from Family Offices, Wealth Managers, Institutional VC investors and Corporate VC funds.
EMV Capital recognizes the benefits of corporate engagement for early-stage technology companies, with its unique multidisciplinary team having led and structured investments alongside some of the world’s leading corporations. EMV Capital is an appointed representative of Sapphire Capital Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. The company has won a number of Awards, notably Best EIS Newcomer 2018’ and ‘Industry Rising Star’ at the Growth Investor Awards 2019, and was nominated as finalist in the Health Investor Awards 2022.
About NetScientific PLC (www.netscientific.net)
NetScientific plc (AIM: NSCI) is a holding company, that invests in, develops, commercialises and realises shareholder value in life sciences/healthcare, sustainability and technology companies, which offer significant growth potential predominately in the UK, EU and USA.
The NetScientific group’s current portfolio of 22 companies includes those held as direct subsidiary and minority stakes, through balance sheet investment or capital under advisory, varying from start-up private companies to publicly listed equities.
NetScientific delivers shareholder returns through a proactive and hands-on management approach to their portfolio companies; identifying, investing in, and helping to build game-changing companies. NetScientific targets value inflection points and the release of value through partial or full exits from trade sales, public listings, or equity sales. NetScientific has a strong transatlantic and growing international presence, providing attractive expansion prospects.
NetScientific can deploy a capital-light investment structure; utilising the power of the PLC Brand, and the NetScientific balance sheet to anchor future investments and achieve a multiplier effect by attracting 3rd party investment for the portfolio companies.
About Vortex Biotech Holdings (www.vortexbiosciences.com)
Vortex, which has benefited from c.$38.5 million in historical investments, is an innovative Trans-Atlantic company operating commercially at the junction of the rapidly growing liquid biopsy, cell analytics and oncology markets. Vortex’s mission is to be the innovation leader in Circulating Tumour Cell (“CTC”) capture – providing researchers and clinicians access to critical insights from whole cancer cells that underpin one of the main causes of metastasis, treatment resistance and disease recurrence.
Originally a spin-out from University of California, Los Angeles, Vortex is now dually based in Cambridge, UK and the Bay Area, US, with a growing international customer base using its automated VTX-1 instrument and generating recurring revenues from disposable cartridges. The company has an innovative “no touch” microfluidic chip technology. It is differentiated because it quickly captures viable, intact CTCs from blood with high yields, which then enable valuable follow-on analysis. This in turn is a key component in cancer research and expected to drive liquid biopsy approaches.
The company’s development is taking place in a growing market. The liquid biopsy market size was valued at $8.1 billion in 2021 and projected to surpass $26.2 billion by 2030 growing at 14 per cent. over the period (Precedent Research). To exploit these opportunities, and after the completion of the Restructuring, the company plans to execute a transformative fundraising.
