(from release) Symyx Technologies Inc. has formed an independent company to develop and pursue commercial applications of proprietary sensor technologies. The new company, Visyx Technologies Inc., will focus on efforts to commercialize the sensor technologies in the transportation, industrial and other markets, particularly for use in passenger, truck and off-road vehicles.
Visyx has received the majority of its funding from CMEA Ventures, a leading venture capital firm based in San Francisco, plus an investment of $400,000 from Symyx. Based on this investment and the transfer of sensor intellectual property rights to Visyx, Symyx owns 37% of the new company. Symyx has retained rights to apply the sensor technologies in certain pharmaceutical, chemical and refining applications. Symyx's President, Isy Goldwasser, and CMEA Ventures' partner, Robert McIntyre, have joined Visyx's Board of Directors.
The sensor technologies transferred to Visyx originally were developed for use within Symyx's internal research programs. Symyx's patented tuning fork technology, developed as a single-sensor platform, has direct application for providing real-time, in-situ measurements and monitoring of the viscosity, density, and dielectric constant of oils, lubricants, refrigerants, fuels, solvents, gases and other single and multiphase fluid mixtures.
This is the second company that Symyx has created to pursue internally developed technologies independently: in 2003, Symyx launched Ilypsa, Inc., a pharmaceutical company pursuing non-absorbed, GI based drugs for renal and metabolic diseases applying proprietary high-throughput technologies created and validated at Symyx. Ilypsa's current drug candidates are based on tailored non-absorbed polymers, where the polymer itself provides the drug function. Its most advanced drug candidate is currently in Phase II clinical trials. By preventing degradation and systemic uptake, the polymeric drugs are designed to act in the gastrointestinal tract and clear the human body through the digestive system. The non-absorbed feature significantly simplifies toxicology and pharmacology requirements for this class of drugs, leading to potentially improved safety profiles. To date, Ilypsa has raised $46 million in financing from investors including NLV Partners, 5AM Ventures, US Venture Partners, Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation and Delphi Ventures.
About Symyx
Symyx Technologies, Inc. is dedicated to helping customers maximize the effectiveness and success of their research and development programs. Symyx develops and applies high-throughput research technologies and research software for customers in the pharmaceutical, chemical, energy, electronics and other industries. Symyx performs research for customers using proprietary technologies to discover new and innovative materials, sells automated high-throughput instrumentation and licenses software for use in customers' own laboratories, and licenses discovered materials, sensors and intellectual property. Symyx has the largest portfolio of patents in the field of high-throughput materials discovery, with over 320 issued patents and 350 patent applications on file worldwide.