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

Alume Biosciences, a US-based nerve injury therapy developer spun out of University of California, San Diego (UCSD), closed a $5.5m series A round on Friday backed by assorted angel investors. The cash will enable Alume to progress its lead candidate, ALM-488, a peptide-dye conjugate that highlights nerves before head or neck surgery, toward a phase 1/2 clinical trial in coming months. Alume’s founding team includes Quyen Nguyen, professor in UCSD’s Department of Surgery and director of its Facial Nerve Clinic. The spinout previously received $5.8m in a September 2019 equity round targeting $8.6m, according to a regulatory filing.
Appentra, a Spain-based parallel programming software environment developer spun out of Universidade da Coruña, has received €1.8m ($2m) in a round featuring multi-university venture unit Unirisco Galicia. Armilar Venture Partners and K Fund co-led the round and were joined by Caixa Capital Risc, the VC management arm of financial services firm La Caixa, as well as state-owned venture unit Xesgalica. Founded in 2012, Appentra’s product helps engineers implement software on high-performance computing platforms such as supercomputers where multiple processors must be configured to run synchronously. Unirisco, Caixa Capital Risc, and Xesgalicia had already co-led a $435,000 round for Appentra in late 2017.
Molendotech, a UK-based water testing technology spinout from University of Plymouth, secured £425,000 ($530,000) in funding at a $4.8m valuation on Friday from unnamed new and existing investors. The round will aid Molendotech’s development roadmap with a view to adding more bacteria-testing applications. Molendotech was founded in 2017 in partnership with commercialisation firm Frontier IP, which now owns  a 12.6% shareholding valued at $612,000. The spinout subsequently secured a three-tranche, $700,000 commitment in 2018.