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

Pneumagen, a UK-based glycobiologic therapy developer spun out of University of St Andrews, received £4m ($4.9m) yesterday in a round led by life sciences investor Thairm Bio and featuring Scottish Investment Bank, part of economic development agency Scottish Enterprise. The funding will help progress Pneumagen’s candidate – a carbohydrate-binding compound derived from bacterial glycosidases – into clinical trials for Covid-19, although it may also treat respiratory syncytial virus and the flu. Pneumagen claims its approach could provide greater protection against emerging viruses, helping to ward off future pandemics. PXL Vision, a Switzerland-based  identity-checking technology spinout of ETH Zurich, has secured CHF4.6m ($4.7m) of seed funding from investors including public-private partnership High-Tech Gründerfonds. The round was led by Six Fintech Ventures, the strategic investment arm for bourse operator SIX Swiss Exchange, and also included state-owned financial services firm Zürcher Kantonalbank, banking group Arab Bank and angel investors Beat Schillig and David Studer. PXL Vision’s technology applies artificial intelligence to mobile camera scans of personal identity papers in order to fulfill anti-fraud customer verification on behalf of clients such as banks. The spinout, a graduate of enterprise software producer SAP’s accelerator, will use the proceeds to target international expansion and refine its product offering. Purdue Ag-celerator, the agtech-focused accelerator formed by Purdue University’s Foundry, Ventures and College of Agriculture units, has committed $100,000 of funding to digital crop evaluation spinout developer Leaf Spec Ag Technologies. Leaf Spec Ag’s concept allows farmers to remotely measure plant nutrient and chemical composition in real-time, building on work led by Jian Jin, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering. Prevent, a Japan-based spinout of Nagoya University’s School of Medicine and the provider of an online lifestyle improvement mobile app called Mystar, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from KDDI Open Innovation Fund, a vehicle co-run by telecommunications firm KDDI and VC firm Global Brain, and textile manufacturer Teijin. Signia Therapeutics, a France-based spinout from multiple institutions and aligned to regional TTO Pulsalys, has been officially revealed to be working on a drug repurposing technology that could help combat Covid-19. Founded in 2017, Signia’s platform, dubbed Signatura, enables researchers to methodically explore failed clinical-stage drug projects as potential treatments for other diseases based on pathological elements of genetic transcriptomic signatures. – Additional reporting by Liwen-Edison Fu

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