Rehovot's Biotech: Evogene Completes $7 Million Financing

Evogene Ltd. announced today that it has completed its second round of financing, raising $7 million from existing and new investors from Israel, Europe and North America. Evogene previously announced the initial $1.75 million of this round which was in the form of a convertible bridge loan from existing investors.

Ofer Haviv, President and CEO stated: "We appreciate the continuing support and confidence shown by our initial investors and are pleased to welcome new investors as we broaden the ownership base of the company." Mr. Haviv continued, "Although a relatively young company, Evogene is developing an attractive pipeline of improved plant traits and is currently in discussions with a number of leading agbio companies about various forms of collaboration and licensing arrangements."

About Evogene

Evogene is a biotechnology company focused on developing high-value commercial products based on plant genomics. The company is merging state-of-the-art predictive computational biology and molecular biology with the most advanced breeding technologies. Evogene's current product development portfolio is focused on: improving abiotic stress tolerance and yield in key crops such as corn, soybean, cotton, tomato and canola; enhancing fiber development in cotton; improving nitrogen use efficiency for key crops and plant manufacturing of therapeutic proteins. Evogene was founded in 2002 by Drs. Hagai Karchi and Rafi Meissner as a plant biotechnology spin-off of Compugen Ltd. (Nasdaq:CGEN) and has a broad license to utilize certain Compugen technology in the agbio field. For additional information, please visit Evogene's Website at www.evogene.com.

Source: Evogene Completes $7 Million Financing. Biowire2K (1 March 2006) [FullText]