Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.

Zikani Therapeutics, a US-based rare disease therapy developer spun out of Harvard University, closed a $7.5m series A1 round on Monday that involved Roche Venture Fund, the corporate venturing unit of pharmaceutical firm Roche, venture firm Advent Life Sciences and healthcare-focused fund Gurnet Point Capital. The series A1 capital is expected to support the optimisation of lead molecules that use ribosome modulation to treat rare genetic diseases such as class 1 cystic fibrosis and a mutation-driven variant of colon cancer. Zikani Therapeutics was previously called Macrolide Pharmaceuticals and last closed a $20m round in 2018 co-led by Roche Venture Fund, Gurnet Point and Advent as well as Novartis Venture Fund and SR One, respective strategic vehicles for pharmaceutical firms Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline. The same investors apart from Advent co-led a $22m series A round for Zikani closed in 2015. Biobot Analytics, a US-based wastewater sensor and analytics businesses founded on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research, secured $4.2m yesterday to increase its seed round to $6.7m. The round was led by MIT’s tough tech fund The Engine with contributions from AmFam Institute Impact Fund, a vehicle aligned to mutual insurance firm American Family Insurance, accelerator Y Combinator and venture firm Data Collective. Founded in 2017, Biobot provides a lab service for measuring wastewater for quantities of drugs such as opioids in order to estimate narcotic consumption across urban populations. The additional cash will help apply the same approach to monitoring Sars-Cov 2 titers in wastewater in a bid to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Ekistic Ventures led Biobot’s initial $2.5m seed tranche in 2018 with participation from Y Combinator, Refractor Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures and undisclosed additional investors, according to GovTech Biz. Regional tech transfer office Satt Sayens has invested an undisclosed sum in Wittym, a France-based building information modelling software business exploiting University of Burgundy research. Wittym’s web-based software applies artificial intelligence (AI) to digital models of buildings to extract data on behalf of stakeholders in construction projects. The spinout extends engineering research conducted under Christophe Nicolle, a professor of computer science and co-founding lead for University of Burgundy’s distributed knowledge and AI unit.

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