Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTGC), the premier specialty finance company providing venture debt and equity to venture capital and private equity backed technology and life science companies at all stages of development, today announced that it provided $20 million in debt financing to Kamada Ltd. in January, 2008. The deal is the first financing Hercules has provided as a result of its alliance with Market Bridges Ltd., a financial services and business-development firm bridging between emerging Israeli growth companies and international capital markets.
Founded in 1990, Kamada is a public biopharmaceutical company, traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (KMDA). The company develops, produces and markets specialty life-saving therapeutics – including specific immunoglobulins and other prescribed medicines – using its proprietary chromatographic purification technology.
“Israel is a growing marketplace for innovative life science companies, and Kamada is one of its elite companies dedicated to developing specialty, life-saving biopharmaceuticals,” said Parag Shah, senior managing director and group head of life sciences at Hercules. “Kamada maintains a dual-prong strategy as a provider and marketer of specialty commodity products as well as a biotechnology R&D organization developing novel therapeutics. Using its highly efficient and cost-effective proprietary protein purification technology, Kamada has been developing and providing biopharmaceutical products to hospitals for more than 10 years.”
Kamada is pursuing new therapeutic products specifically for the treatment of underserved diseases. For instance, the company recently announced that it successfully completed Phase I clinical trials designed to test the safety and tolerability of the aerosolized version of Kamada’s flagship product, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin (AAT), for the potential treatment of various lung diseases. EMEA has already approved the company’s clinical plans for Phases II-III, enabling the company to move forward with the development of the aerosolized AAT product. In addition, the company’s intravenous AAT product is undergoing Phase III clinical trials in the United States.
“Kamada continues to excel in the development, production and distribution of unique, life-saving pharmaceuticals,” said David Tsur, CEO of Kamada. “Hercules’ debt financing will help fund a mixture of Kamada’s clinical programs and strategic priorities that enable our continued development and marketing of specialty, life-saving biopharmaceuticals designed to improve the quality of life of patients worldwide.”
About Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc.:
Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. is a NASDAQ traded specialty finance company providing debt and equity growth capital to technology and life science companies at all stages of development. Founded in December 2003, the company primarily finances privately held companies backed by leading venture capital and private equity firms. Hercules invests in a broad range of ventures active in technology and life science industries and offers a full suite of growth capital products up and down the capital structure. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. and has additional offices in the Boston, Boulder, San Diego and Chicago areas. Providing capital to publicly-traded or privately-held companies backed by leading venture capital and private equity firms involves a high degree of credit risk and may result in potential losses of capital. For more information, please visit www.HTGC.com.
About Kamada:
Kamada is a public biopharmaceutical company (TASE:KMDA) developing, producing and marketing a line of specialty life-saving therapeutics using its proprietary chromatographic purification technologies. Licensed and marketed in more than 15 countries, several of these specialty therapeutics hold registered and pending patents and are currently in advanced clinical trials. For additional information, please visit www.kamada.com.
Forward-Looking Statements:
The statements contained in this release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements including, without limitation, the risks, uncertainties and other factors we identify from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although we believe that the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are reasonable, any of those assumptions could prove to be inaccurate and, as a result, the forward-looking statements based on those assumptions also could be incorrect. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are made as of the date hereof, and Hercules assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements for subsequent events.