Tosoh Bioscience to invest in Madison-based Semba Biosciences will bring multibillion dollar industry leader to Wisconsin

Madison, Wis. – Tosoh Bioscience LLC (tosobioscience.com

) announced it has completed an equity investment in Semba Biosciences with the intention of acquiring full ownership. Tosoh Bioscience LLC provides liquid chromatography products to laboratories and manufacturing plants in the Americas.  The company is a subsidiary of Tosoh Corporation (TYO:4042) in Japan which comprises over 100 companies worldwide with sales of over $7 billion dollars. Semba Biosciences (sembabio.com

) is a Madison, Wisconsin-based company that specializes in protein drug manufacturing processes that enable faster, easier, less expensive and more efficient ways to obtain purified materials for drug products and therapies.

“Combining Semba Biosciences’ advanced continuous chromatography bio separation technology with Tosoh Bioscience’s best-in-class chromatography resins, creates enormous value for our customers by providing the highest productivity and efficiency in biopurification” said Ali Soleymannezhad, Director of Sales and Marketing at Tosoh Bioscience.

The transaction was approved by the Board of Directors of both companies and will be completed on December 1, 2018.

According to Dr. Robert Mierendorf, President of Semba Biosciences, “Teaming up with Tosoh Bioscience helps us to advance and expand our research, development and sales of Semba proprietary manufacturing processes of protein drug products”.

“Tosoh’s commitment will result in an increase in the Semba team by 25% to 50% in the next couple of years” said Ken Johnson, Kegonsa Seed Fund Managing Director.  “Kegonsa Seed Fund is Semba’s largest shareholder and its first investor.  “Kegonsa is delighted with Tosoh’s investment.  They bring skills, experience and technology that only a major player has to Semba – should be a terrific team”.

About Kegonsa Capital Partners (KCP) (www.kegonsapartners.com

)  KCP was founded in 2004 to manage Wisconsin-based venture capital firms. They manage the Dane County-based Kegonsa Seed Fund and Coinvest Fund and with partner Sun Mountain Capital to manage the Badger Fund of Funds I, LP.

About the Kegonsa Seed Fund

The Kegonsa Seed Fund started investing in Wisconsin startups in 2005 and is Wisconsin’s premier seed venture capital fund.  The fund has invested in 13 start-up companies, typically as the first investor.  Since inception four Kegonsa Seed fund companies have been acquired at values of $20 MM, $35 MM, $50 MM and more $100 MM dollars.