Advaita targets $1m

Advaita, a software spin-out of Wayne State University (WSU), is targeting a seed round of $1m as it looks to further develop a platform for universities and pharmaceutical firms to better manage genomic data.

The company is planning to hit its target within six months, and wants to follow it up with a series A penned in for 2015. The company has already secured several grants, including a $2.35m Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), $2m from NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant, and $125,000 from the Michigan Emerging Technologies Fund.

Advaita, which has been in existence since 2005 but didn’t receive its WSU tech transfer licence until 2011, offers a programme which assists researchers in identifying mechanisms of action in disease with a view to find potential drugs and side effects derived from genomic data.

Lenka Fedorkova, assistant manager of the SBIR and tech transfer programs for the NIH, said: “Advaita demonstrated a high level of maturity for an early-stage company. It demonstrated it had developed the technology to the point where it was ready for commercialization, and it had a well-rounded management team, which is not always the case with companies we fund at the NIH.”