According to its mid-year financial report, Aquabounty had less than $1.5 million in cash and stock. And it has no other products besides genetically modified salmon in development.
In February, the cash-strapped company agreed to sell its research and development arm to its largest single shareholder, Kakha Bendukidze, a former Republic of Georgia finance minister turned investor, in return for his help raising $2 million in cash to stay afloat. Aquabounty's CEO Stotish fretted that Bendukidze, who controlled nearly 48 percent of Aquabounty's public stock, would move the company overseas. But in October Bendukidze's investment fund sold its shares to Intrexon, a biotech firm headquartered in Germantown, Md.
Stotish views the sale as a positive development, but he still worries that the U.S. government is unwilling to approve the technology at the heart of his company's work.
"This is about more than Aquabounty and more than salmon," Stotish says. "And shame on us if we allow this to slip away because of partisan bickering and people who oppose new technology."
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