Venn Life Sciences raises £650,000 in share sale

Drug development firm Venn Life Sciences has raised £650,000 before expenses in a share sale.

The company, which provides clinical trials services to pharmaceutical and biotech firms, said it expects to use the proceeds for the acquisition by Venn Germany of CRM Biometrics and for “general working capital purposes”.

Following a strategic review last year, the company established that biostatistics plays an “increasingly important” role in trial design and that delivery of strong consulting capability in this area is likely to result in full clinical projects for Venn.

Venn currently generates more than €1 million annually in biostatistics income but does not have sufficient resources of its own to respond to new enquiries in this service line.

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There are also scarce resources in the sector generally and this makes it difficult and expensive to find new hires to grow the service line organically.

The company has therefore signed a letter of intent with CRM Biometrics “to acquire certain of the business and employees” as a route to expand its biostatistics capabilities.

Venn Germany will acquire CRM Biometrics’ biostatistics team of five people, which it believes is capable of generating €750,000 in annual revenue. It will also acquire all of CRM Biometrics’ existing customer and supplier contracts.

Venn Life Sciences chief executive Tony Richardson said the company would look to “further develop” capabilities in this sector.

“As biostatistics plays an increasingly important role in trial design and delivery of strong consulting capability in this area is likely to result in future full service projects for Venn, we are committed to the expansion of our capabilities in this area,” he said.

“We look forward to welcoming the CRM Biometrics team into Venn and to further developing our capabilities in this area.

“Venn currently generates more than €1 million annually in biostatistics income. The acquisition of CRM Biometrics brings clear synergies in the form of shared clients and further cross selling opportunities.”