Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Naluri, a Malaysia-based digital therapeutics developer focused on mental health and chronic disease, has completed a $1.5m pre-series A round backed by Stanford-StartX Fund, the vehicle aligned with the university’s StartX accelerator, Digital News Asia reported today. Global Founders Capital led the round, which also included TH Capital and unnamed individuals and existing investors. Founded in 2017, Naluri has launched a digital health app which implements visual design principles, personal coaching, behavioural science and data science to encourage patients managing mental health disorders and chronic diseases. The funding will drive recruitment and an international expansion. Naluri reportedly obtained $250,000 of seed funding in January 2018 from healthcare data analytics firm BioMark and 500 Durians.
Xain, a Germany-based blockchain technology developer spun out of University of Oxford, has received an undisclosed amount of cryptocurrency from individual Dominik Schiener, co-founder of blockchain middleware platform Iota. Founded in 2016, Xain is developing a security protocol that exploits blockchain, distributed machine learning and cybersecurity technologies to control network access in automated and internet-enabled machines. Schiener’s contribution will help refine Xain’s product, which is intended to improve data protection and privacy within internet-of-things networks. Xain secured $7m in a June 2018 round led by VC firm Earlybird that featured unnamed strategic investors from international markets including Asia.
Purdue University has publicly launched US-based spinout KinaRx to discover drug molecules for diseases including acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and lung cancer. The company’s platform is powered by bioinformatics, compound synthesis and disease biology, and is already progressing AML and lung cancer-fighting assets. KinaRx’s platform was pioneered in the lab of Herman Sintim, a drug discovery professor of chemistry at Purdue who specialises in anti-cancer agents including kinases. The spinout is now seeking investment and has applied for grant funding.
Purdue University yesterday also revealed the work undertaken by US-based cholera detection technology spinout Omnivis. Founded in 2017, Omnivis is working on a device that samples liquids to quickly detect cholera – an infectious disease carried by contaminated water – before providing the results through its smartphone app. The spinout was co-founded by Katherine Clayton, a PhD alumna of Purdue’s College of Engineering, together with two assistant professors from the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering – Tamara Kinzer-Ursem and Jacqueline Linnes – and Steven Wereley, a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering. Omnivis does not appear to have raised equity funding.
Dublin City University (DCU) is to spin out a new Ireland-based company in September 2019 to deliver a smart firefighter guidance system. The as-yet unnamed spinout hopes to develop a system called Pathfinder that monitors the signal from digital ID tags held by firefighters, enabling the dispatcher to track their status during dangerous assignments. Pathfinder is the brainchild of Martin Trainor, a senior assistant chief fire officer with Cavan County Fire Service, who is working alongside Conor Brennan and Derek Molloy, two members of DCU’s School of Electronic Engineering. The team has received grant funding from enterprise support agency Enterprise Ireland and hopes to procure further capital to bring its device to market.
