Category: Finance
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Smartphone Eye Exam Company Raises $6M in Venture Funds
24 June 2015. Smart Vision Labs Inc., a two-year-old company developing vision exam technology that works on smartphones, raised $6.1 million in its first venture funding round. Financing for the New York City enterprise was led by Techstars Ventures, with contributions from Heritage Group, Connectivity Capital, and Red Sea Ventures. The company’s technology aims to…
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$50,000 Challenge Seeks Liver Disease Biomarkers
19 June 2015. A new challenge on InnoCentive asks for biomarkers indicating damage to the liver, conditions that today often require invasive procedures such as biopsies to diagnose. The competition has a total purse of $50,000 and a deadline for proposals of 17 August 2015. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowdsourcing competitions for corporate…
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Internet-of-Things Security Architecture Designed
19 June 2015. Engineering students at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany are developing a security architecture to protect wireless communications among small household devices connected in what’s known as the Internet-of-Things. The team from the university’s Horst Görtz Institute that specializes in IT security is also receiving funds from a German government program to start a…
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Anti-Infection Compound Devised for Dental, Wound Care
18 June 2015. A new formulation of a common antibacterial agent can protect against infections for weeks or months at a time, according to its developers at University of Bristol in the U.K. The team led by Bristol dental materials scientist Michele Barbour is developing Pertinax, an extended antimicrobial compound, and receiving this year’s £25,000…
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Institute Developing Engineered Bacteria for Gut Diseases
17 June 2015. Engineers and medical researchers at Harvard University are designing genetically engineered bacteria that can diagnose and treat gastrointestinal disorders affecting travelers, as well as people suffering from acute or chronic gut diseases. The team from Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard developing the engineered microbes is funded by a $4.7…
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Intel Begins $125M Diversity Investment Fund
10 June 2015. The venture capital division of semiconductor manufacturer Intel unveiled a fund to invest in technology start-ups founded by women and under-represented minorities. Intel Capital announced as well the first four investments from its Capital Diversity Fund, which expects to distribute some $125 million over the next 5 years. Intel cited data showing…
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Grant Funds Exosome Cancer Research, Optioned to Spin-Off
9 June 2015. A new $1.7 million grant from National Cancer Institute is funding research at University of New Mexico on harnessing exosomes as potential cancer therapies, with a spin-off company already optioning the technology for commercial development. The alliance between the university and spin-off company, Exovita Biosciences, includes an agreement between the university and…
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Biotech Adds Antibiotic Program, Raises $30 Million
8 June 2015. Spero Therapeutics, a developer of antibiotics, is adding a new class of anti-infection drugs to its pipeline, and raised another $30 million to its first venture funding round. The Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company, a spin-off from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was founded in April 2014 to develop therapies addressing the growing…
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Life Sciences Commercialization Firm to Crowdfund IPO
4 June 2015. Innovation Economy Corporation is going public by skipping the usual route of hiring an investment bank, and instead will use crowdfunding to attract investors to its initial public offering of stock. The Riverside, California enterprise, that goes by the trade name ieCrowd, licenses life science and health-related technologies from university research labs…
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Antibiotic Developer Adds $9.2 Million in Early Funds
3 June 2015. Auspherix Limited, a start-up developer of new antibiotic drugs, raised £6 million ($US 9.2 million) in early-stage venture financing. Funding for the two year-old enterprise, located in a pharmaceutical and biotechnology incubator at Stevenage, U.K., was led by technology commercialization company Imperial Innovations plc, with earlier investor Australia’s Medical Research Commercialisation Fund.…