Upstate Group
Upstate Group, Inc. is a leading supplier of research reagents and services to the pharmaceutical and life sciences research community.
The company was originally founded in 1998 in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA with a dual strategy of identifying new antigens as targets for oncology therapeutics and as a reagent supplier. The founder was well known to Advent from its investment in Genzyme which he also founded.
Advent invested in the company alongside the US venture group Health Care Ventures, in 1999 to help expand the operations of the company. In 2001, the company moved to focus exclusively on the reagents business. The company identified kinases as a major new area of interest for the pharmaceutical industry and established a collaboration with a leading scientist in the kinase field.
Kinases are a very important family of enzymes present in the body that are involved in many key functions of the body. New drugs in development must often be screened against kinases to understand how they may interact with them before taking them further in development. The company established the most complete panel of kinases in the world and became the leading company in the world in kinase screening.
With this portion of the business providing very substantial growth, the company quickly grew revenues to over $60M per year by 2004. In 2004, Upstate was acquired by Serologicals, Inc., a publicly quoted, US company that has a major presence in the research reagents and services business. The transaction was for $205 million which provided Advent with a multiple of over 3x its investment.