ValveXchange Wins The Third Annual Faegre & Benson Venture Showcase Award, Presented...

ValveXchange Wins The Third Annual Faegre & Benson Venture Showcase Award, Presented At BioWest 2007

DENVER--(Business Wire)--ValveXchange (Aurora) won the third annual Faegre & Benson Venture
Showcase Award at the BioWest 2007 Conference & Expo. The announcement
is made by Chris Shapard, Deputy Director of the Colorado BioScience
Association (CBSA), who says the $10,000 Venture Showcase Award was
again provided by the Faegre & Benson law firm and announced at the
Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) Awards Luncheon, held today at
the Grand Hyatt.

ValveXchange holds patented technology on a two-piece
bioprosthetic tissue valve that resolves the compromises between
conventional mechanical and tissue heart valves. The company's
technology is easily adopted by surgeons with a clear regulatory path
and a $1.2 billion market opportunity. ValveXchange has exclusively
licensed its core technology, invented by founder Ivan Vesely, PhD,
from The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Thus far, the company has been
financed by seed funding from the founder and three SBIR grants. That
funding has allowed for prototypes developed with proof of concept,
two-piece exchangeable tissue valve, functional & mechanical tests, in
vitro testing of prototypes, validated performance and in vivo
testing. Going forward, the company is initiating recruitment of Angel
and Series A Financing of $2.5 million to bring it to the Clinical
Trial stage. For more information, call Dr. Vesely, Founder and CSO,
at 323-481-9643 or go to www.valvexchange.com.

ValveXchange competed against five other companies for this honor.
Additional participants included mBioSystems (Boulder, CO), Nanodisc,
Inc. (Boulder, CO), Sierra Neuropharmaceuticals (Boulder, CO), Solix
Biofuels (Fort Collins, CO), and Ventrus Biosciences Inc. (Greenwood
Village). A brief explanation of each company can be found at
http://www.cobioscience.com/2007VentureShowcase.pdf.

According to Shapard, representatives of each competing company
had 10 minutes to present their technologies and business plans to a
panel of bioscience venture capitalists on Friday morning. The venture
capitalist panelists included: Harry Ross, Panel Chair, Aweida
Ventures; Paul Grand, RCT BioVentures; Mark Lupa, Tango Group; Steve
Murchie, Keiretsu Forum Angels; and Dan Watkins, Draper Fisher Mercury
Fund.

Additional awards presented at the CBSA Annual Awards luncheon
included:

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-- Lifetime Achievement Award
-- Dr. Larry Gold
-- 2007 Company of the Year Award
-- AlloSource
-- 2007 Rising Star Award
-- Inviragen
-- 2007 Volunteers of the Year Award
-- Debora Hankinson
-- Phil Macey
-- 2007 Partner of the Year Award
-- Forest City Development
-- 2007 Legislator of the Year Award
-- Representative Jim Riesberg (D-Weld)
-- 2007 Chairman's Awards
-- Ed Wood
-- Kevin Smith
-- Bonnie Vivian
-- The new Pinnacle of Science Award
-- Dr. John Stewart, University of Colorado
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About Colorado BioScience Association

CBSA is a not-for-profit corporation providing services and
support for Colorado's growing biosciences industry. With more than
400 members, CBSA actively works to promote the growth of the industry
by working for a better business environment, grow the state's biotech
workforce, fight for policies that support a strong bioscience
industry in the state and speak with a single voice on behalf of the
industry. For more information, visit http://www.cobioscience.com.

About Faegre & Benson LLP

Faegre & Benson LLP is a full-service law firm with offices in
Denver, Boulder, Minneapolis, Des Moines, London, Frankfurt and
Shanghai, with more than 100 attorneys in Colorado and more than 475
worldwide. Faegre & Benson is proud to support the Colorado and
national bioscience industry with services in corporate law,
intellectual property, labor and employment, financial transactions
and a wide range of other legal services. For more information, visit
http://www.faegre.com.

Colorado BioScience Association
Christine Shapard, 303-592-4089
Deputy Director
cshapard@cobioscience.com
http://www.cobioscience.com
or
Absolutely Public Relations
Maggie Chamberlin Holben, 303-984-9801
maggie@absolutelypr.com
http://www.absolutelypr.com

Copyright Business Wire 2007