Secondary funding for Swedish drug firm

3i has announced an investment in Labwell, the Swedish drug development technology company. It has led the second round financing as the largest single investor with 40 per cent, while HealthCap, BankInvest and SEB are each committing 20 per cent. The financing will be used to take Labwell’s new cutting edge Coherent Synthesis’ products to market.

Coherent Synthesis’ works within the field of microwave-enhanced chemical synthesis and will accelerate the drug development process between ten to 100 times faster than that currently possible. The package has been evaluated and tested by Novartis, Ericsson, Merck, SKB and Astra.

Labwell was founded in May 1998 and launched with the support of HealthCap, a leading Swedish life sciences venture capital fund, as its sole financier at the time. Hans Johansson, its chief executive officer, was previously vice president for business development within genomics at Amersham Pharmacia Biotechnology.