Rheonix expands for manufacturing, prepares product launch

ITHACA — Rheonix, Inc., an Ithaca–area-based developer of automated molecular-testing products, is working to complete a manufacturing build-out and preparing to launch its first commercial product later this year.

“We’re on schedule to be up in a manufacturing mode in the beginning of the second quarter of this year,” says Tony Eisenhut, president of Rheonix.

The firm on Dec. 18 announced it has raised $14 million for the product launch and the manufacturing expansion through a combination of debt and equity investments, Eisenhut says.

Cayuga Venture Fund and Rand Capital SBIC Inc., a subsidiary of Rand Capital Corp. (NASDAQ: RAND), led this round of funding, Eisenhut says.

Rheonix will use the money to expand its facilities and systems to fulfill its joint-development agreement with Carlsbad, Calif.–based Life Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: LIFE).

Rheonix will also target the funding for the commercialization of its first clinical, molecular-diagnostic product offering, Eisenhut says.

The Rheonix expansion includes a remodeling of its existing 12,000-square-foot space at 22 Thornwood Drive in the village of Lansing and the addition of a new, 11,000-square-foot headquarters at 10 Brown Road in the Cornell Business & Technology Park in Lansing, Eisenhut added.

“We moved our development team, our engineering team, and our computer scientists [and] software engineers over to 10 Brown Rd., which made way for the manufacturing expansion at 22 Thornwood [Dr.],” Eisenhut says.

The firm’s new headquarters is in existing space, he adds.

Black Diamond Construction, Inc. of Lansing performed the construction work, and architect George Breuhaus served as the project designer, Eisenhut says.

Besides the new headquarters and the manufacturing renovations, Rheonix has also opened a 1,000-square-foot Innovation Center, which is adjacent to the new headquarters but in a different building, according to Eisenhut.

“The Innovation Center is taking the technology know-how and capability and applying it to real-world problems, primarily in the diagnostic area,” Eisenhut says.

 Peng Zhou, senior vice president for research and chief scientific officer at Rheonix and holder of 14 U.S. patents, will lead the Innovation Center.

Zhou envisions it as a way to pursue practical applications of the company’s existing technology, which includes the Chemistry and Reagent Device (CARD), a device the size of a smart phone that can run multiple samples through a molecular assay with no user intervention.

An assay is an investigative (analytic) procedure in laboratory medicine, pharmacology, environmental biology, and molecular biology.

The firm’s first clinical-product offering is a “specific molecular test” using the CARD technology, Eisenhut says.

Rheonix is also designating a portion of the investment funding to complete the company’s first submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“We’re looking to put forth a molecular assay that is a panel assay for the detection of sexually-transmitted diseases,” Eisenhut says.

He describes it as a box that has a consumable, which is the CARD, and then the CARD is customized for a specific assay based on the reagents, or the chemicals, placed on it, Eisenhut says. The first customization is for the sexually-transmitted infection molecular assay that will be on the CARD that runs — what the firm — calls EncompassMDx platform, which is the box, he says.

The company anticipates its first registration in the second half of 2014.

In late 2008, Rheonix spun out of Kionix, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of inertial sensors like accelerometers.

Rheonix employs 47 people, including 45 people in Lansing and two workers at its office in Grand Island, near Buffalo.

Rheonix acquired a company in Grand Island, called Innovative Biotechnologies International, Inc., in December 2008.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com