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MB Venture Partners Scores another Investment Victory

06|19|06 - Almost three years to the day after Memphis-based MB Venture Partners led the Series B round of financing for Nashville-based BioMimetic Therapeutics, the company has now gone public. To many people, the initial public offering of a small Nashville company that develops and commercializes bio-active drug-device combination products for the healing of musculoskeletal injuries and disease doesn’t seem like significant news for Memphis. However, in the ultra competitive biosciences field every success in the region should be viewed as important.

The success of BioMimetic can’t help but shine a positive light on Tennessee as a state where new ideas are being successfully grown. And, the fact that it is local money, in the form of the MB Venture Partners Fund I portfolio, makes the Tennessee market shine even brighter.

In a note to Partners and Investors, Gary Stevenson of MB Ventures said, “It is always exciting to see one of our portfolio companies do well, but it is particularly gratifying when the company is focused on our preferred therapeutic niche and is based in our preferred geography.”

The therapeutic niche Stevenson refers to is the musculoskeletal and orthopedic industry in which Memphis has a particularly strong international reputation thanks to world leaders like Smith & Nephew and Medtronic. Following completion of human clinical trials, which demonstrated the safety and efficacy of its platform technology, BioMimetic received marketing approval from the FDA for its first product – a grafting material for bone and periodontal regeneration. The company's product and product candidates all combine recombinant protein therapeutics with tissue specific scaffolds to actively stimulate tissue healing and regeneration.

BioMimetic is the second portfolio company from MB Ventures Fund I that has successfully completed an IPO – Memphis-based GTx (www.gtxinc.com) priced in February 2004.