Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Vaccine Group, a UK-based animal disease vaccine spinout of University of Plymouth, has obtained £680,000 ($883,000) in its first funding round, valuing the business at $12.3m. Commercialisation firm Frontier IP owns a 17% stake in Vaccine Group, however investors in the round were not disclosed. Vaccine Group is targeting animal and livestock-borne diseases using vaccines to insert non-infectious pathogen DNA into a benign virus vector – the herpes virus – common across all animal species. The company has received government grants in the UK, US and China for programs targeting viruses such as Ebola and Streptococcus suis, a swine-borne disease that can infect humans with potentially fatal consequences.
Two University of Chicago-linked businesses have each received $250,000 from George Shultz Innovation Fund, the venture fund for the university’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. DrLullaby is working on a digital platform for parents containing evidence-based approaches to help their children sleep, while Laiya will help medical researchers prepare clinical trials informed by Bayesian adaptive principles, which guide the effectiveness of studies and reduce their scope for failure. The companies were selected from a list of four in George Shultz Innovation’s autumn 2019 finals competition.
Agrodesign Studio, a Japan-based pesticide developer, secured ¥100m ($910,000) on Thursday, in a round featuring Real Tech Fund, a vehicle formed by biofuel supplier Euglena, research firm Leave a Nest and investment firm SMBC Nikko. The round included Incubate Fund and came after up to $27,000 of pre-seed funding from University of Tokyo Innovation Platform’s UTokyo IPC Incubation Support Program in September 2018.
