Allylix, Inc., a natural and fine chemical company, today announced that the company has successfully secured $1.5 million in capital and appointed Carolyn Fritz, M.B.A., as its new CEO. The financing will be used to fund the development and scale-up of its first products. The close of this round of funding was lead by President and CEO, Carolyn Fritz.
Allylix is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of terpenes, a class of natural chemicals found in plants. These natural chemicals are of significant interest to the food, agriculture and pharmaceutical markets as a result of their use as fragrances, flavors, agricultural products and new medicines. Historically, these natural chemicals have been too costly for most applications because of the expense of extracting them from plants. Allylix’s technology allows it to cost effectively produce a wide range of these natural chemicals using its high yielding fermentation process and thereby make these valuable compounds available to many new market applications.
The Company was founded by Dr. Joseph Chappell at the University of Kentucky and Dr. Joseph Noel of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, Calif., along with Corporate and Intellectual Property Attorney, Tom Jurgensen to commercialize their research.
This funding is a major step towards the realization of our goal to bring these natural chemicals to market,” said Carolyn Fritz, president and CEO of Allylix. “With this technology, we are able to provide vital compounds to our customers, thus enabling the development of products that would have otherwise been too costly.”
Leading the Series A funding is the Bluegrass Angels, a group of Kentucky investors seeking to develop start-up companies in the region by providing entrepreneurs with seed capital. Also contributing to this round are California angel investors, the Commonwealth Seed Fund of Kentucky, a state-managed venture capital fund, and the Kentucky Commercialization Fund, a state initiative administered by the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation.
