San Antonio’s successful recruitment of Cytocentrics more than a year ago has led to another economic win that could further enhance the city’s role in the global bioscience arena.

The company, which recently changed its name to CytoBioscience Inc., has acquired a Birmingham, Alabama-based biotech firm called Soluble Therapeutics that will look to establish roots here over the next 12 months.

CytoBioscience officials believe the "multimillion-dollar purchase" could draw more companies and talent to the Alamo City. At a minimum, it will likely attract more attention from entities that could be looking for a new home.

"What this does is deepen the biotech footprint in San Antonio. And whenever you do that, you just don’t know what shore the ripples from these waves will land on," CytoBioscience CEO Dr. James Garvin told me.

CytoBioscience, which decided to move its headquarters from Germany to San Antonio in 2015, develops and manufactures devices that allow other researchers, medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies to better understand how human cells react to medicine. The company’s acquisition of Soluble Therapeutics is part of a larger strategic shift aimed at broadening its product platform.

Soluble Therapeutics Managing Director Sharney Logan said the acquisition will allow CytoBioscience to expand its technology to more global markets. As part of the agreement, the Alabama biotech firm will change its name to Soluble Bioscience and move its operations, including its scientific team, to San Antonio.

Garvin expects other bioscience companies will take note of San Antonio’s latest win.

"This will continue to raise the awareness of what is already happening in the city," he said.

CytoBioscience leadership hinted recently that the company was looking to widen its reach. And the acquisition of Soluble may not be its last move.

But the deal could trigger other economic opportunities as San Antonio continues to build up its bioscience industry assets, as well as its reputation across the United States and abroad.

"San Antonio is already one of the best places in the world for biotechnology,” Garvin said. “But we need to continue to beat our chests."

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2016/12/27/german-firm-bringing-more-biotech-to-san-antonio.html

December 27th 2016

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CytoBioscience, Inc. has purchased Birmingham, Alabama-based Soluble Therapeutics and will move the company’s operations to its San Antonio location.

The deal closed November 1, according to James Garvin, Chief Executive Officer of CytoBioscience. Details of the multi-million dollar purchase price were not disclosed.

"The Soluble Therapeutics team has created a business offering that aligns very well with our technology and work to positively impact the efforts of drug development enterprises and researchers across the globe,” he said. “This deepens our product offering in the market and also strengthens our scientific team. We look forward to integrating their team and delivering an expanded set of capabilities to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries."

"Combining forces with CytoBioscience will dramatically increase our business, as it will provide additional service opportunities to our existing customers," said Sharney Logan, Managing Director of Soluble Therapeutics. “Additionally, this transaction will provide new opportunities to expand our technology in global markets. As part of the acquisition, Soluble Therapeutics will also be changing its name to Soluble BioScience to reflect its increased capacities."

Soluble employs 8 people and the plans are for the company to move to San Antonio within the next year.

About Soluble Therapeutics, Inc.

Soluble Therapeutics, Inc (now Soluble BioScience) was founded in 2008 to commercialize the HSC™ Technology which is licensed from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The company’s services enhance the drug development process by rapidly optimizing protein solubility and stability.

About CytoBioscience, Inc.

CytoBioscience creates and manufactures devices that represent a convergence of bioscience, nano science, microchip development, algorithms and engineering. The company’s devices allow other researchers, medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies to better understand how human cells react to medicine. CytoBioscience was founded in Germany and moved its headquarters and manufacturing to San Antonio in 2015.

Contacts

• for CytoBioscience, Inc.
• Jim Dublin, 210-387-3113
• jdublin@dublinstrategies.com

Source: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161220005098/en/Soluble-Therapeutics-Acquired-CytoBioscience

December 20th 2016

Xconomy Texas — San Antonio — Cytocentrics, the maker of instruments that can be used to screen if and how cells might react to drugs, has changed its name to CytoBioscience.

The name change is happening in part because the San Antonio company is expanding its footprint in bioscience, CEO James Garvin said in a press release. The company’s lead device, the CytoPatch, automates the process of measuring the reaction that cells’ ion channels have to various drug compounds, helping researchers determine how a given compound might help or harm a cell, Garvin told me earlier this year.

"By telling what’s going on in those channels, you can give an awful lot of data about how a particular compound or a particular drug or a particular event is affecting that cell," Garvin said in August. "If there are 500 compounds that go into making a drug, we’re going to look into each one of those compounds, and we’re going to tell whether that compound does something to a human cell."

CytoBioscience is able to do that quickly and with a high degree of accuracy, Garvin said in August. The name change and expansion in bioscience still reflects its primary focus on ion channels and safety pharmacology, Garvin wrote in an e-mail today.

The company is “expanding that into other research areas, though with a foundation on ion channels, but looking at proteins, disease treatment modalities whose foundational aspects stem from ion channel understanding,” Garvin wrote in an e-mail. The company is considering acquisitions, according to the press release.

The Center for Innovative Drug Discovery, a research group founded in 2012 as a joint venture between the University of Texas at San Antonio and the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, uses one of the CytoBioscience devices.

Founded in 2001 in Germany, CytoBioscience was lured to San Antonio in 2015 by venture capital money and government incentives. The company has raised $15.8 million from some 11 investors since 2015, including San Antonio-based firm Targeted Technology, according to a regulatory filing. The city of San Antonio promised to give the company as much as $1 million for moving here, creating jobs, and investing around $15 million in making the Alamo City its headquarters.

About Bluegrass Vascular Technologies

Bluegrass Vascular Technologies is a medical technology company dedicated to developing and commercializing lifesaving devices and methods that address shortcomings in vascular access procedures. For more information, please visit www.bluegrassvascular.com.

Source: http://www.xconomy.com/texas/2016/12/08/san-antonio-company-cytocentrics-renames-itself-cytobioscience/#

December 8th 2016