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

Nanotis, a Japan-based infectious disease diagnostics developer spun out of University of Tokyo, has raised a pre-series A round of undisclosed size from pharmaceutical company Taisho Pharmaceutical for research and development for rapid diagnostic devices. The company had secured ¥45m ($402,000) in October 2018 from financial services firm Shizuoka Bank’s Shizuoka Capital unit, light technology developer Hamamatsu Photonics and unnamed private investors. EneCoat Technologies, a Japan-based perovskite solar cell developer spun out of Kyoto University in 2018, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Kyoto University Innovation Capital (KU-iCap) and MMC Innovation, which is a corporate VC vehicle co-founded in March 2019 by diversified materials company Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and advanced materials manufacturer Japan Material Technologies Corporation’s JMTC Capital unit. The spinout had already raised an undisclosed sum from KU-iCap in January 2019. DentalXrai, a Germany-based dental imaging software developer, was spun out of  Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the university hospital linked to Humboldt University and Free University Berlin, yesterday. DentalXrai’s software will apply machine learning to dental scans to flag up details indicative of tooth decay and diseases. Dentists would upload scans to be automatically analysed, using the feedback in aid of their final diagnosis.  The software was trained using Charité’s medical X-ray catalogue as well as datasets from the hospital’s clinical partners. DentalXrai has not disclosed details of its funding but was launched with support from Ascenion, the tech transfer company that supervises Charité’s assets.

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