Highlander Venture Fund has made its second investment, selecting Sensorygen as its latest portfolio company.
Sensorygen, a US-based mosquito repellent developer spun out from University of California (UC), Riverside, has received $50,000 in capital from Highlander Venture Fund (HVF).
HVF, a VC fund aimed at the institution’s ecosystem, has the option to provide Sensorygen with another $450,000, according to the fund’s managing director, Dave Schwab.
The deal marks the second investment for Highlander, following a $250,000 investment in US-based life science tools developer NanoCellect in January 2018. Schwab expects the fund to make additional commitments later this year.
Founded in 2015, Sensorygen is researching naturally-occurring chemicals that could repel mosquitoes by disorientating the insect’s sense of smell. The repellent would avoid including a chemical known as Deet that can dissolve plastics and adhere to human proteins.
Sensorygen used artificial intelligence-based software to select six chemicals as candidates. It is aiming to create a fragrant, affordable and mass-producible repellent that will fight the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria.
Thomas Stone, chief executive of Sensorygen, said he expected to commercialise the mosquito repellent within approximately two years.
Sensorygen is based on work led by Anandasankar Ray, an associate professor in UC Riverside’s Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology who caught malaria while growing up in India.
The spinout will use the capital for continued development, and could eventually diversify into other insect repellent segments, as well as fragrances or flavourings for foods and cosmetics.
It has entered talks with unnamed companies that could help commercialise products internationally. An unspecified Florida-based licensee is testing one of Sensorygen’s crop pest repellent candidates against the Asian citrus psyllid, which can transmit citrus greening disease.
HVF launched in June 2017 with a target size of $10m. It has now raised almost $5m from investors including UC Riverside’s arm for managing philanthropic donations, the UCR Foundation.
Dave Schwab said: “We like things where there is a real clear problem, a large and painful problem, and for most people, putting toxic things like Deet on their body is a problem that needs to be solved.”