Caprion Biosciences Expands Its Biomarker and Immune Monitoring Franchise by Acquiring US-based Primity Bio

MONTREAL, August 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Caprion Biosciences announced today that the company acquired Primity Bio Inc., a specialized provider of biomarker and immune monitoring services located in Fremont, California. Caprion will leverage Primity's strong technological capabilities and innovative track record to further expand its immunology and molecular profiling service offering as well as its ability to globally support its clients.

"The acquisition of Primity Bio provides us access to highly complementary and well-differentiated biomarker and immune monitoring services while considerably expanding our geographic reach to better support the global clinical needs of our clients," said Martin Leblanc, President and CEO of Caprion.  "Building on the acquisition of ImmuneHealth, which delivered a critical European footprint, this US expansion and the opportunity to work with the highly talented and innovative scientific team at Primity significantly enhances our ability to deliver on Caprion's service diversification and international expansion strategy."

Founded in 2010 by Peter Krutzik, PhD, and Tom Wehrman, PhD, Primity Bio is a leading provider of cutting-edge flow cytometry services with deep expertise in assay development, early drug discovery, pre-clinical animal sample analysis, biomarker discovery, and advanced human clinical sample analysis.  Using the latest in single-cell analysis technologies, Primity specializes in highly complex immunophenotyping, intracellular signaling, cell sorting (FACS), and high-parameter CyTOF (mass cytometry) analysis. "Joining forces with Caprion will provide critical commercial channels to deliver our innovative services to a broader array of global biopharma partners and facilitate the launch of our distributed cloud computing flow cytometry analysis software, CellEngine," said Peter Krutzik, CEO of Primity Bio. "Primity's proprietary technologies for biomarker discovery, cell signaling analysis by flow cytometry, and combination of pre-clinical and clinical capabilities are true differentiators in the industry, and are highly complementary to Caprion's existing services and CAP/CLIA-certified laboratories," added Tom Wehrman, Primity's VP of R&D.

This announcement marks Caprion's second acquisition since GHO Capital's investment in July 2016.  With this acquisition, Caprion adds an operational location in the US in addition to those of its headquarters in Montreal, Canada, and its European site in Gosselies, Belgium, acquired in 2016.  Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

About Caprion Biosciences, Inc.  Caprion Biosciences is the leading provider of specialized immunology and proteomics laboratory services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Its immune monitoring business unit, ImmuneCarta®, offers proprietary multiparametric flow cytometry services for functional analyses of innate and adaptive immune responses. Caprion has achieved top-tier growth in recent years based on its expanding offering and increasing demand for high-quality immune-monitoring services in patients treated with innovative immunomodulating drugs and vaccines for immuno-oncology, infectious, and autoimmune diseases.  Caprion's proteomics business unit, ProteoCarta™, offers proprietary gel-free, label-free mass spectrometry (MS) for comprehensive, quantitative, and robust comparative measurement of proteins across large sets of biological samples for the discovery and validation of protein biomarkers. This platform has also enabled the deployment of novel services for the identification and quantification of neoepitopes, as well as for pharmacokinetics analysis and characterization of host cell protein impurities of biologic drugs. For more information, please visit http://www.caprion.com.

About Primity Bio. Primity Bio was founded in 2010 with the goal of bringing innovative flow cytometry platforms to biopharma for use throughout the drug discovery process, from lead selection through clinical trial sample analysis. Its discovery unit provides specialized platforms that include profiling of cell surface and intracellular signaling proteins, high-speed cell sorting by FACS, and deep interrogation of drug mechanism of action. Primity's clinical unit delivers fully customized and complex immunophenotyping, receptor occupancy, and cell signaling assays of clinical samples for exploratory pharmacodynamic analysis. Primity also offers analysis of pre-clinical and clinical samples by CyTOF (mass cytometry) which expands the number of measurable biomarkers per sample to over 35. For further information, please visit http://www.primitybio.com.

About GHO Capital (Global Healthcare Opportunities), or GHO Capital Partners LLP.  GHO was founded in 2014 as a specialist healthcare investment adviser based in London. Its vision is to apply global capabilities and perspectives to build a world-class healthcare specialist private equity firm by recognising and seizing the highly attractive and underpenetrated European market opportunity. The firm has a powerful combination of transaction, investment, and industry skills which sets it apart from traditional private equity firms. For further information, please visit http://www.ghocapital.com.

Patrick Tremblay, SVP & Corporate Development Officer, Caprion Biosciences Inc., ptremblay@caprion.com , +1-514-513-1998.