SIRS-Lab successfully raises EURO 10M new equity capital to introduce its first sepsis diagnostic tests to the market

Jena/Geneva/Erfurt, Decem­ber 14^th 2006 – SIRS-Lab, the inno­va­tion leader in mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tics for life threat­en­ing infec­tions announced today that it has suc­cess­fully raised EURO 10 mil­lion new equity cap­i­tal led by Affen­tranger Asso­ciates along­side with bm|t Beteili­gungs­man­age­ment Thürin­gen and Swiss insti­tu­tional investors. The com­pany will use the funds to bring new mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tics to the mar­ket to enable fast iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and sim­ple mon­i­tor­ing of sep­sis often a deadly disease.

As of today sep­sis – also called blood poi­son­ing – is the sec­ond most fre­quent cause of death in hos­pi­tals after car­dio-vas­cu­lar dis­eases. With about two mil­lion cases world­wide out of which approx­i­mately 50% die, sep­sis remains one of the great­est and least pub­licly rec­og­nized chal­lenges of the clin­i­cal med­i­cine. SIRS-Lab is one of the pio­neers that rec­og­nized the impor­tance to iden­tify very early the occur­rence of sep­sis as well as to mon­i­tor the evo­lu­tion of the dis­ease. The objec­tive of the com­pany is to dra­mat­i­cally improve the sur­vival chances of the patients by pro­vid­ing to the clin­i­cians with sim­ple and non inva­sive tests to ini­ti­ate effi­ca­cious ther­a­peu­tic treat­ments rapidly.

“Our finan­cial invest­ment and hands-on involve­ment in SIRS-Lab reflect our con­vic­tion in the strong added value of the tests devel­oped by the com­pany” said Nico­las Fulpius, Part­ner at Affen­tranger Asso­ciates “The fast democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tic tech­nolo­gies com­bined with a high unmet med­ical need in sep­sis, posi­tions SIRS-Lab ide­ally to become one of the lead­ing play­ers in the multi-bil­lion mar­ket of diag­nos­tics for severe infections.”

SIRS-Lab has devel­oped its highly inno­v­a­tive diag­nos­tic pro­grams in coöper­a­tion with the Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tal Jena. Together, they have build up over years a world­wide unique bio-bank with clin­i­cal sam­ples from hun­dreds of sep­sis patients. Recently, SIRS-Lab has announced to have iden­ti­fied for the first time a robust and spe­cific gene expres­sion sig­na­ture for sep­sis that will serve as basis for one fam­ily of new diag­nos­tic prod­ucts. In addi­tion, the com­pany will lever­age its unique and pro­tected Pure­prove ® tech­nol­ogy to bring fast and highly sen­si­tive pathogen tests to the market.

“With sub­stan­tial new cap­i­tal, SIRS-Lab is now ready to bring its first set of sep­sis tests to the mar­ket very shortly” said Ste­fan Russ­wurm, CEO of SIRS-Lab “The com­bi­na­tion of the sci­en­tific exper­tise of SIRS-Lab with the expe­ri­ence of Affen­tranger Asso­ciates in the devel­op­ment of high-growth com­pa­nies will enable SIRS-Lab to reach the next level in terms of value creation.”

As result of this invest­ment, Affen­tranger Asso­ciates and Beteili­gungs­man­age­ment Thürin­gen will be join­ing the Board of the Company.

About SIRS-Lab GmbH

Located in Jena (Ger­many), SIRS-Lab is a pri­vately held diag­nos­tic com­pany devel­op­ing unique and inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts to iden­tify and mon­i­tor life-threat­en­ing infec­tions, one of the major causes of death in hos­pi­tals across the world. SIRS-Lab’s vision is to sup­port clin­i­cians in their bed­side deci­sions by pro­vid­ing them with fast and reli­able high-per­for­mance point of care sys­tems and thus, to improve ther­a­peu­tic impact and reduce the mor­tal­ity rate of patients. Founded in 2000 by S. Russ­wurm, K. Rein­hart, E. Straube and H.-P. Saluz, SIRS-Lab employs today 25 peo­ple. The com­pany has raised in the past EURO 15M in form of pri­vate invest­ments and pub­lic grants. SIRS-Lab already com­mer­cial­izes Looxster ®, a sam­ple prepa­ra­tion that iso­lates bac­te­r­ial DNA from human DNA as well as gene-expres­sion ser­vices and prod­ucts (LabAr­ray­tor ®).

About Affentranger Associates SA

Incor­po­rated in 2002, Affen­tranger Asso­ciates is a Switzer­land based busi­ness plat­form focused on the theme of value cre­ation and active man­age­ment. As prin­ci­pal investor, the com­pany has the ambi­tion to achieve sus­tain­able long-term returns by invest­ing a com­bi­na­tion of man­age­ment and cap­i­tal in high-growth poten­tial com­pa­nies. Affen­tranger Asso­ciates has offices in Geneva and Zurich.