Affomix Corp., a newcomer focusing on production and screening of antibodies, has completed a $7 million Series A venture financing round.

The money, which includes convertible preferred loans, will be used for operating expenses and "will give us a good start," Affomix President and co-founder Michael Sherman told BioWorld Today, declining to say how long the $7 million potentially could last.

The start-up company was founded in 2006, and it expects to have five employees within the next two weeks, Sherman added.

Four Seasons Ventures and Connecticut Innovations joined founding investor Elm Street Ventures in the financing.

Affomix said it has an efficient, "automated approach" to obtaining a very large number of antibodies for use in the diagnosis of disease and development of therapies. The New Haven, Conn.-based company said it expects to obtain antibodies against hundreds or even thousands of protein targets with the time and effort that it typically takes to generate antibodies against one or a few proteins.

With those "libraries" of antibodies, the company said, it will be possible for the first time to accurately perform simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analyses of thousands of different proteins.

Véronique Bardach, managing general partner of Four Seasons Ventures, stated in a news release that her firm believes Affomix will "revolutionize proteomics research" and lead to "sweeping improvements in the understanding of large-scale biology."

Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations, said he was impressed with the experience of the company founders, citing its "highly credible team of founders, including two Yale University professors as well as seasoned, 'serial' entrepreneurs as president and head of research, gave CI the confidence to invest."

Sherman, who is a scientist and partner at Elm Street, has co-founded and served as the initial president of seven biotechnology companies, including five based at least in part on research conducted at Yale. In addition, Sherman has established numerous corporate and academic relationships and helped to structure and negotiate a number of mergers.

Robert Bettigole, managing partner of Elm Street Ventures, pointed to Affomix's approach for developing antibodies. "Current methods for developing monoclonal antibodies are often tedious, time-consuming and expensive," he said in the release. "The technologies that Affomix is developing are expected to dramatically shorten the time and expense required for the generation of antibodies suitable for research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications."

Elm Street seeks to create and initially operate life sciences companies founded on intellectual property developed at Yale University and other research institutions in the region, according to the firm's website.

In other financing news:

• Cadence Pharmaceuticals Inc., of San Diego, said it has completed a previously announced $49.3 million registered direct offering of 9.2 million shares of common stock at a price of $5.34 per share. The proceeds provide sufficient capital to advance two product candidates - Acetavance for acute pain and fever and Omigard for the prevention of catheter-related infections - through to new drug application submissions, which is anticipated in the first half of 2009, the company said.

• Cellectricon AB, of Gothenburg, Sweden, said its share issue provided the company with SEK89 million (US$14.1 million) to continue market expansion in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The company said it is planning a number of significant product launches in 2008-09. In 2008, Cellectricon said it will launch Cellaxess HT, which will be the only system on the market that enables large-scale supply of genetic material for cells and is tailor-made for high-throughput RNAi screening.