Garber Fund Invests In Molecular Biology Company
The MBA student managers of the Garber Venture Capital Fund at Penn State's Smeal College of Business have voted to invest $250,000 in Indigo Biosciences Inc., a molecular biology contract research organization founded by two Penn State professors.
Garber Fund Invests In Molecular Biology Company
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (May 30, 2008) – The MBA student managers of the Garber Venture Capital Fund at Penn State's Smeal College of Business have voted to invest $250,000 in Indigo Biosciences Inc., a molecular biology contract research organization founded by two Penn State professors.
The Garber Fund, a $5 million MBA student-managed fund, made the investment as part of Indigo's Series A fund-raising round after full due diligence, term sheet negotiation, and legal management undertaken by teams of students in the Venture Capital Practicum Program.
The funding has helped the company move to a larger facility and hire several individuals to support its growing research and development and manufacturing activities. A portion of the investment will also be used to expand its frozen assay product line.
Indigo creates products and services that facilitate drug discovery and development, the analysis of active ingredients, and molecular toxicology. The company specializes in aiding pharmaceutical companies with toxicology screening in the pre-clinical discovery stage of drug development. Garber's funding was instrumental in helping to launch the company's product line of human nuclear receptor assay kits, which are currently being tested and evaluated by pharmaceutical companies around the world.
Indigo was founded in 2005 by Blake R. Peterson, associate professor of chemistry in Penn State's Department of Chemistry, and Jack Vanden Heuvel, professor of molecular toxicology in the Department of Veterinary & Biomedical Sciences.
About The Garber Venture Capital Fund
The Garber Fund was established in 1999 with a $5 million commitment from Penn State alumnus John Garber and his wife Bette to bring reality to the teaching of entrepreneurship and venture capital. The fund is part of the Nittany Lion Venture Capital Association (NLVC), an MBA student-run management group that works with small companies and other investment groups in early stage business planning, execution, and due-diligence assignments. NLVC forms part of Smeal's highly acclaimed entrepreneurship program, in which students are immersed in real-life situations throughout their studies.
Smeal is also home to the Nittany Lion Fund LLC, a $5 million student-managed investment portfolio with more than 60 private investors, making the college one of only a handful of business schools that have large student-managed funds for investment in both private and public equities embedded in their academic programs.
For more information on Nittany Lion Venture Capital or the Penn State Entrepreneurs Network, contact Anthony Warren at 814-865-4593.
REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
