InViragen Wins The First Annual Faegre & Benson Venture Showcase Award, Presented At BioWest 2005

Denver, CO, November 09, 2005 --(PR.com)-- Fort Collins-based InViragen LLC has won the first annual Faegre & Benson Venture Showcase Award at the BioWest 2005 conference. The announcement is made by Chris Shapard, bioscience director at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), who says the $10,000 Venture Showcase Award was provided by the Faegre & Benson law firm and announced at the Colorado Bioscience Association (CBSA) Awards banquet held earlier this evening at the Colorado Convention Center.

Founded by Dr. Dan Stinchcomb, who accepted the award Tuesday evening, and Dr. Jorge Osorio; InViragen is developing vaccines for new, emerging markets worldwide. InViragen has identified promising technology for a dengue vaccine, a West Nile vaccine and a plague vaccine for growing vaccine markets in the developing world, in North America and in Europe. 

“Our firm is very pleased to have been able to take a leadership role in helping support growing biotech companies and provide participants important visibility in front of a high-profile venture capital panel,” says Dr. Richard Nakashima, a biotech patent attorney with Faegre & Benson, who presented the award to Dr. Stinchcomb.

InViragen competed against nine other Colorado companies for this honor. Additional participants included: Aktiv-Dry LLC (Boulder); ApopLogic Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Aurora); BioCare Systems, Inc. (Parker); Brotica, Inc. (Fort Collins); CeraPedics LLC (Lakewood); Cytologic Inc. (Fort Collins); Lohocla Research Corporation (Aurora); MBC Pharma Inc. (Boulder); and Thinc Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Aurora). A brief explanation of each company’s technology and business plan can be found at http://www.biowestconference.com/venture_showcase.html.

According to Denise Brown, CBSA Executive Director, representatives of each competing company had 10 minutes to present their technologies and business plans to a panel of bioscience venture capitalists on Tuesday morning. The venture capitalist panelists included: Dan Mitchell, Sequel Ventures (Boulder); Tim Black, Integra Ventures (Seattle); Teri Willey, Arch Development Partners (Chicago); Tim Mills, Sanderling (Northern California); and Chris Kersey, Cogene Ventures (Houston).

The Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) is a not-for-profit corporation providing services and support for Colorado's growing biosciences industry. With over 300 members, CBSA actively works to promote the growth of the industry by working for a better business environment, grow the state's biotech workforce, fight for policies that support a strong bioscience industry in the state and speak with a single voice on behalf of the industry.  For more information, please visit http://www.cobioscience.com.

The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade works to foster a positive business climate that encourages quality economic development through financial and technical assistance for local and regional economic development activities throughout the State of Colorado. For more information, please visit http://www.AdvanceColorado.com.

Faegre & Benson LLP is a full-service law firm with offices in Denver, Boulder, Minneapolis, Des Moines, London, Frankfurt and Shanghai, with more than 100 attorneys in Colorado and more than 450 worldwide.  Faegre & Benson is proud to support the Colorado and national bioscience industry with services in corporate law, intellectual property, labor and employment, financial transactions and a wide range of other legal services.  For more information, please visit http://www.faegre.com.

###

Contacts:

Christine Shapard, Director of Biosciences and Emerging Industries for the Governor's Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), 303.892.3840.

Denise Brown, Executive Director, Colorado BioScience Association, 303.592.4073.