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

Remohab, a Japan-based remote cardiac rehabilitation system developer spun out from Osaka University, has closed its latest round at ¥350m ($3.1m). SMBC Venture Capital, the investment arm of financial services provider Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, participated in the latest $710,000 tranche, which also included Golden Asia Fund Ventures. The first $2.4m tranche in January 2020 was led by Osaka University Venture Capital (OUVC), the institution’s venture capital arm, and included Hack Ventures’ Hack Osaka Investment unit, in addition to Amashin-Shinkin Capital, Kansai Innovation Network Investment and Life Science Fund, respective vehicles for financial services firms Amagasaki Shinkin Bank, Senshu Ikeda Bank and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. OUVC and Hack Ventures had already supplied $450,000 in 2018. Calviri, a US-based RNA cancer vaccine developer spun out of Arizona State  University, has completed a $2.3m seed round featuring five private investors including Calviri board member Jacque Sokolov. The spinout has created a blood screening platform that identifies antibodies for cancerous molecules called frameshift peptides, caused by errors in RNA transcription and processing. Calviri believes the approach could facilitate off-the-shelf vaccines for all subtypes of cancer, as well as early-stage diagnostics. The idea emerged from research from Arizona State’s Biodesign Institute and was licensed through the university’s independent tech transfer company, Skysong Innovations. Gra&Green, a Japan-based agricultural biotechnology spinout of Nagoya University, has raised a ¥250m ($2.2m) series A round co-led by venture capital firm Beyond Next Ventures and Nagoya University-Tokai Regionwide University Venture Fund II – a joint vehicle formed by Nagoya University, Gifu University, Toyohashi University of Technology, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Mie University and Beyond Next Ventures. The round also featured insurer Sompo Holdings and two unnamed individual investors. The spinout has now raised $2.9m in total funding, it said, though details about its seed round could not be ascertained. BioMatrix, a Netherlands-based developer of restorative gels for spinal injury spun out of Technical University of Eindhoven, has obtained €350,000 ($378,000) from regional government-backed seed fund Brabant Startup Fonds. BioMatrix expects the funding to help complete preclinical testing with a view to a clinical pilot study in early 2021. The spinout’s injectable biomaterial is intended to heal intervertebral discs in the back, restoring damaged cells over six-to-nine months. Intervertebral discs are pieces of fibrocartilage that loosely bind the vertebrae and help absorb shocks to the spine. Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development spun out NanoMosaic yesterday with an undisclosed seed sum from venture firm Tiger Gene. NanoMosaic will commercialise biological screening…

Subscribe to go deeper

GCV subscribers get access to all our proprietary data and deep-dive articles, as well as the global directory of CVC investors.



Not sure if you have a subscription?