Live Ventures will fund spinouts and mentor academic researchers from the medical university.
Duke-NUS Medical School, a Singaporean graduate-entry medical school, has launched an incubator and funding programme to commercialise academic research.
Live Ventures has raised S$10m ($7.5m) towards its $15m target, and will provide up to $371,000 per academic research project over the next five years. It will make investments in resulting spinouts, and it aims to partner with public and private companies to co-fund projects.
The programme will pair seasoned entrepreneurs with awarded projects to help with the commercialisation of the research.
Duke-NUS, a collaboration between Duke University in the US and the National University of Singapore, previously commercialised cPass, the world’s first rapid smart test kit for Covid-19.
“As an incubator, Live Ventures aims to turn scientific discovery into viable commercial opportunities with the potential to create startups by providing industry expertise, mentorship and funding support,” said Rainny Xie, head of Live Ventures.
Live Ventures’ first investment is in a platform to identify targets for chronic inflammatory diseases. The incubator is investing alongside 65Lab, a drug discovery investment vehicle created by drug developer Evotec and also backed by Leaps by Bayer, the corporate venturing arm of pharmaceutical firm Bayer.
