Axion Biosystems
Company details
Year Aquired
2021
Location
Atlanta GA, United States
Revenue (2021)
148 m
Sector
Life Sciences tools
Employees
76+
Investment Themes
Changing Demographics
Contact
If you want to know more about Axion Biosystems please contact Tommi Unkuri at: tommi.unkuri@summaequity.com
Website
Axion at a glance
Axion Biosystems is a US based life science tools business specialized in developing, producing, and marketing BEA (Bioelectronic Assay) instruments for customers in biopharma and academia. Axion’s products enable scientists to understand many aspects of cell function in real-time, giving them insight into, e.g., electric activity, synchrony, oscillation, growth, shape change, and potency of a cell. Understanding of cell function is highly relevant for many pharmaceutical segments, e.g., development of cell and gene therapies.
Key developments in 2021
In 2021, Axion grew its revenues by 44% to $16.4m with strong results across both MEA and impedance instruments. After the Summa acquisition, the company concluded on several new key hires, including CFO, CSO, Head of HR and Head of Operations. Moreover, Axion has meaningfully increased the S&M and R&D teams to enable continued strong growth in the business. Axion also initiated discussions with synergistic M&A targets during 2021 and eventually signed two deals with M-Solv and CytoSMART during early 2022. Axion also started to measure and track SDG KPIs as agreed on the board.
Impact dimensions
Healthcare systems face great challenges in terms of the quality of patient outcomes produced in the system, and waste related to ineffective treatment regimes. Healthcare systems need better tools to target disease in more effective ways and create better outcomes. The research community that is driving the development of such tools has a great need to improve its understanding of biology and understanding cell function is central to some of the most important questions related to this work. Tools for analyzing cell function is important for many pharmaceutical segments, including the development of cell and gene therapies. BEA technology provides academic and biopharma organizations the ability to deepen their understanding of cell function, enabling faster, more accurate and more cost-efficient drug discovery and development, as well as improved quality control in drug production processes.
What is the outcome?
The products offered by Axion Biosystems allows academia and biopharma to understand aspects of cell function in real-time, giving them insight into, e.g., the activity, synchrony, oscillation, growth, shape change and potency of a cell.
Who are the stakeholders?
The products are used by academia and biopharma customers. Eventually, the ultimate beneficiary of the research conducted by these stakeholders are the patients, that get access to better treatment.
How big is the effect, and does it last?
Understanding cell function is central to some of the most critical pharmaceutical segments, including the development of cell and gene therapies. Such therapies can be life saving for patients, and improved healthcare solutions like these will change outcomes for relevant patient groups for the foreseeable future.
If Axion Biosystems didn’t exist…
Without Axion’s products, scientists would lack access to a powerful tool, needed to understand many aspects of cell function in real-time. This would make research on relevant new healthcare tools more difficult.
Impact risk: what can go wrong
Product quality is fundamentally important, so if Axion cannot deliver the required product quality, its customers would likely stop using its products, being left with less efficient tools to conduct their research.
Year Aquired
2021
Revenue (2021)
148 m
Employees
76
Investment Themes
Changing Demographics
Sector
Life Sciences tools
Location
Atlanta GA, United States
Contact
If you want to know more about Axion Biosystems please contact Tommi Unkuri at: tommi.unkuri@summaequity.com
Website
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SDG Alignment
KPI reporting
REVENUE (SEKm)
Number of publications
Number of CGT Companies as customers