Pressure BioSciences closes $800,000 private placement financing

Life sciences company Pressure BioSciences (NASDAQ:PBIO) said Wednesday it has closed on an $800,000 private placement financing.
The placement consisted of the sale of 971,867 shares of restricted common stock, and 485,937 warrants to purchase further common stock.
Seven existing investors, including the company's CEO, chairman, and two investors from Pressure BioSciences' November 2011 registered direct offering, participated in the latest financing.
The price per unit was $0.8025, for units consisting of 789,350 shares and 394,677 warrants, and was $0.9125 for units consisting of the remaining 182,517 shares and 91,260 warrants.
Each unit consisted of one share of restricted common stock and a warrant to purchase one-half share of common stock.
The offering was done at a premium to the company's closing share price of 74 cents on Monday February 6, the day before the private placement closed.
Warrants are exercisable for a period of five years, beginning on August 7, 2012, at an exercise price of 74 cents for the purchasers of the 789,350 shares, and at 85 cents per share for the purchasers of the 182,517 shares.
President and CEO of Pressure BioSciences, Richard Schumacher, told Proactiveinvestors that the financing gave the company $412,000 in new cash and reduced about $425,000 in notes payable to about $50,000.
Schumacher also noted that the company is now focused on aggressively commercializing its products based on its key patented pressure cycling technology (PCT) platform, which uses rapid and repeating cycles of hydrostatic pressure at controlled temperatures to extract cell components in the preparation of a biological sample, such as DNA, RNA, and proteins from humans, animals and plants, for further study.
The applications of the company's PCT-based products are endless - from the key $2 billion target market of mass spectrometry, an analytical technique used to determine the characteristics of molecules, to biomarker discovery, forensics and counter-bioterrorism, among other uses.
Since Pressure BioSciences began commercial operations in the middle of 2007, it has come a long way, releasing a number of PCT-based products geared towards the $6 billion sample preparation market, including three pressure-generating instruments named Barocyclers, a patent-pending sample homogenization device (The Shredder SG3), five types of single-use processing containers and six different, application-specific reagent kits.
Already, the company has installed around 200 of its PCT Barocycler instruments plus required consumables in laboratories. The sample preparation system has been proven to be safer, more accurate, reproducible, and much faster than current cell extraction methods - with up to 48 samples able to be processed from a wide variety of cells and tissues within minutes.
Last month, the life sciences company saw its shares surge after it announced the signing of a co-marketing and selling agreement with Digilab, expected to boost its sales efforts significantly.
The companies said they intend to co-market and sell their respective product lines worldwide, including in industry publications, at scientific meetings, on each company's website, through common collaborator studies, at key industry trade shows, and in visits to customer sites.
Pressure BioSciences also inked a distribution agreement with Germany-based scientific product provider IUL Instruments late last year. The deal gives IUL the exclusive right to market and sell the company's pressure cycling technology (PCT) sample preparation instruments and consumables in Germany and Switzerland.
In November, the company managed to raise $843,000 from a registered direct offering, which was also used in its effort to boost commercialization efforts. Schumacher said it has a specific commercialization strategy in place, which includes both internal sales and external partnerships - a strategy that is expected to be implemented further this year.
Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc., a subsidiary of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc. (AMEX:LTS), acted as the exclusive financial advisor for the private placement transaction.