Malin Announces Acquisition Of Artizan Biosciences Shareholdings

By Bio-IT World Staff 

February 6, 2017 | Malin  announced that it has acquired a 32% shareholding of Artizan Biosciences. Malin invested in a founding equity round alongside Hatteras Venture Partners, a venture capital firm with which Malin has a strategic partnership. 

Artizan is a newly created biotechnology company headquartered in Durham, NC, with labs in New Haven, CT, that was founded to address diseases involving the human intestinal microbiota.

In collaboration with Noah Palm at Yale, Artizan has developed a capability of distinguishing certain pathogenic bacteria from the remainder of the intestinal microbiota. The ability to target these specific bacteria could lead to treatment options for any number of digestive disorders as well as other diseases including obesity, autoimmune disease and a wide variety of skin, lung and central nervous system (CNS) diseases. 

Adrian Howd, Chief Investment Officer of Malin, wrote: "Artizan's strong foundational science underpins a platform that has potential therapeutic applicability across a number of diseases. Artizan's proposed approach is disruptive to current treatment and would offer new and novel therapeutic options for patients suffering from a broad array of inflammatory disorders."

Richard Flavell, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the Founders of Artizan, added: "Our goal to build Artizan into a sustainable, highly innovative, and potentially disruptive biotechnology company that, with tangible clinical progress, will offer new therapeutic options for patients suffering from a wide variety of diseases. We intend to be a leader in the microbiota-driven inflammatory diseases space, which is both broad and far reaching."