GenPrime receives big influx of cash
Spokane biotech firm GenPrime Inc., has raised $850,000 in local financing and will use the money to push sales of its key product, plus develop new blood-testing tools.
The funding, part of a second round that’s expected to raise $1 million for GenPrime, was announced Thursday by Johnny Humphreys, the company’s new chairman and CEO.
Humphreys, who led Spokane-based Itron Inc. for a dozen years, took over as GenPrime CEO last month, he said.
Jim Fleming, one of the company’s founders and CEO since 2001, will remain as president and chief technology officer.
“We’re fortunate in being able to get Johnny to come out of retirement for us,” Fleming said. “He’s very capable and has enormous ability in helping a company grow.”
Humphreys came to Spokane after working in Silicon Valley where he was president of Datachecker, a $250-million company that developed supermarket scanning and checkout systems. Once in Spokane, he served as Itron’s CEO from 1987 to 1999. In recent years he’s served on several area boards, including those of GenPrime and LineSoft, a Spokane technology firm.
“I am impressed with the work GenPrime is doing to provide tools that can limit the effectiveness of terrorists and their imitators,” said Humphreys. “I really believe in what GenPrime is doing and want to help get its powerful tools out there, to help first responders deal with security threats.”
The company’s major product, Prime Alert, is a sensitive, quick response kit that determines if a substance contains dangerous toxins or harmful microbes, such as anthrax, ricin or the botulism bacterium.
Humphreys said the $850,000 will help boost sales of Prime Alert, primarily to law enforcement, government agencies and first-response teams.
The new funding will also be used to develop GenPrime’s next major product, BacStat, a kit to be used in testing blood supplies. Fleming described that product as an application used by blood banks and health care facilities that need to track the quality of human blood stores.
GenPrime has applied for a number of patents for the BacStat product, noted Humphreys. He said the company hopes to start selling BacStat later this year.
WIN Partners, LLC, a Spokane-based investment group, led GenPrime’s latest investment round. WIN Partners associate John Pariseau was given a seat on GenPrime’s six-person board, Humphreys said.
He said that the company plans to raise $150,000 more as part of the investment round.
Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities, Inc., of Spokane, was the original investor in GenPrime. Following this latest round of funding, Metropolitan’s stake in GenPrime is now roughly 30 percent, Humphreys said.
GenPrime is headquartered in the Holley Mason Building downtown. It employs about 20 and could grow slightly in the next several months, Humphreys said.