University of Manchester’s Innovation Factory has celebrated its best financial year to date.

University of Manchester’s commercialisation arm, Innovation Factory, has announced record results for its most recent financial period ended July 31 with 13 new spinouts created. Licensing income for the year reached a total of £7.4m ($10.1m) – 48% above target – while spinouts raised approximately £44m between them, including £3.4m put into new companies. Innovation Factory also highlighted the creation of Northern Gritstone – an investment company co-founded with the universities of Sheffield and Leeds – that will seek to raise £500m to invest in spinouts from the three institutions. Global University Venturing took an in-depth look at University of Manchester and Northern Gritstone in its April 2021 issue. Andrew Wilkinson, chief executive of Innovation Factory, said: “University of Manchester is a truly global institution, with a reputation for education and innovation that resonates across the world. “The Innovation Factory has the responsibility to take the world-changing ideas and technologies that are created at the university and commercialise them to be used for the benefit of society as a whole.” The 13 new spinouts created by the university are: SmartIR, which has created an electromagnetic invisibility cloak and thermal management for the aerospace industry; Aletheia Imaging Solutions, which will market reference targets for mission-critical components made by additive manufacturing; InPepCide, which is working on a new family of anti-fungal therapeutics with an initial focus on the eye disease fungal keratitis; Gene Gini, which will commercialise reference gene software; Mantra Diagnostic, focused on hypoxic tumour biomarkers to support targeted treatment and drug development; Spotlight, which will sell artificial intelligence imaging software to speed up the identification of blood cancers by pathology labs; Tabrix, specialised in therapeutics targeted at hard-to-treat pathogens such as tuberculosis; Ceydr Labs, the developer of a universal power management device with a wide range of applications including battery charging; Retendon, which will advance work on a synthetic tendon repair system; Careloop, which aims to help patients with mental health problems such as schizophrenia; Link Biologics; which is working on therapeutics targeting indications such as dry-eye disease and osteoarthritis; Ravan, which is identifying and repurposing drugs that can stop or retard cellular senescence; and CrystalGrower, a developer of software to help chemists and biologists predict crystal morphology and surface structure.

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Thierry Heles

Thierry Heles is the editor of Global University Venturing, host of the Beyond the Breakthrough interview podcast and responsible for the monthly GUV Gazette (sign up here for free).