Venture Capital News
Gov. Perry Announces Council to Ensure Continued Economic Growth
Gov. Rick Perry announced the creation of a new Governor's Competitive Council, which will create a framework for communication, growth and innovation in state government through a collaborative effort with key regulatory industries, the private sector and institutions of higher education. This announcement came during the Texas Lyceum 2006 Public Conference in San Antonio, where business and community leaders and elected officials gathered in an effort to create a public policy agenda for economic growth in the state.
Perry noted that in order for the Texas economy to grow and prosper, Texas must build on recent progress and be even more competitive and nimble in the effort to attract jobs, corporate expansions and relocation projects.
The Texas Enterprise Fund has leveraged more than $9 billion in new investment and to bring more than 40,000 new jobs to Texas. And recent Emerging Technology Fund grants have begun to attract top-notch faculty to Texas colleges and universities and to make new technologies commercially viable in the state.
The council will be comprised of industry leaders, representatives of the academic community, and key regulatory state agencies. It will also have representatives from the economic development community and the K-12 system. It will have a broad cross-section of experts familiar with economic development challenges, workforce training, regulatory impediments and education needs. The council will begin meeting after the first of the year. Specific membership and the size of the council has yet to be determined.
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Nottingham Spin-out Company Opens North American Operation
A University of Nottingham spin-out company developing pioneering anti-cancer technology is set to open a North American operation.
OncImmune will develop and commercialize technology that could identify an immune response to breast cancer up to four years before the cancer is identified on mammograms. It is widely acknowledged that treatment of breast cancer at an early stage results in improved outcomes.
The company is to open a North American arm with a 14,000-square-foot lab in Lenexa, near Kansas City, in a $30 million deal that will also involve collaboration with cancer researchers at the University of Kansas.
OncImmune was founded in 2003 to commercialize technology developed in the laboratories of John Robertson, a professor of surgery at The University of Nottingham. Research into the detection of the immune response to breast and other types of cancer continues in the laboratory of Professor Robertson, while development of commercial products is funded through OncImmune, Ltd.
The company's core technology involves blood tests that can detect the early signs of cancer much sooner than current techniques allow — meaning many future cancer sufferers could be further investigated and diagnosed at a stage of the disease when treatment is much more likely to be effective.
OncImmune's tests measure autoantibodies that accumulate in the blood in reaction to the presence of a cancerous tumor, even when the tumor is in its earliest stages. Preliminary studies have already shown that the test is positive up to four years earlier than a mammogram might indicate a breast cancer.
The first products OncImmune plans to develop will be used as aids for the detection of breast and ovarian cancer. Collaborating with Kansas University's School of Pharmacy, and Higuchi Biosciences Centre and Medical Centre, the company plans to follow these products with aids to the early detection and characterization of all the major solid tumor cancers such as those of the lung, prostate and colon.
In December of 2005, the company secured a substantial round of private investment, ensuring its ability to develop, and if scientifically justified, market the initially targeted products.
OncImmune is one of more than 25 successful spin-out companies that have started life at The University of Nottingham. Other spin-outs have developed ground-breaking research and are taking it to the international marketplace in the fields of healthcare, engineering, pharmaceuticals, food science, computer science, agriculture and the environment.
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New Oxford University Spin-out Company to Improve Road Safety
The 64th spin-out company from the University of Oxford, OxTox Ltd, will produce drug-testing kits for the police to use on drivers that are as reliable and easy to use as breathalysers for alcohol.
OxTox Ltd will turn recent discoveries from the Chemistry Department in Oxford University into a working handheld testing device that will clearly indicate if a person is under the influence of illegal drugs.
Drugs such as cannabis and amphetamines impair driver reaction times and judgement. They are implicated in many fatal road traffic accidents, so there is a desperate need for a device that is as easy to use and reliable as an alcohol breathalyser. The OxTox Drugsensing approach will provide such a test.
OxTox Ltd will build upon breakthrough electrochemical sensor technology developed in the research group of Professor Richard Compton in Oxford's Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory.
Professor Compton and Dr Craig Banks have designed and built a smart sensor that, when combined with electricity and a sample of saliva, produces a signal only when the exact target drug is present.
OxTox Ltd was spun out through Isis Innovation, the University of Oxford's wholly owned technology transfer company. The company raised first round investment of £600,000 (US$1.14 million).
The company has an experienced management team. John Parselle, the Chief Executive Officer of OxTox, is a successful entrepreneur who has previously built and sold three multi-million dollar companies.
Previous spin-out companies based on analytical chemistry have included Oxford Biosensors Ltd and Oxford Medical Diagnostics Ltd.
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One Million Dollar Gift Given to UC Berkeley's Center For Entrepreneurship and Technology
Representatives of The University of California, Berkeley announced that the school has received its first $1 million dollar gift for the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (CET), its newest initiative to broaden the skill set of Berkeley students, particularly engineers and scientists.
The contribution was made by In Sik and Isabel Rhee. In Sik, a Bay Area entrepreneur, technical visionary, and Berkeley alumni, co-founded at age 24 KIVA, an application server software company that was acquired by Netscape Communications in 1997 and served as the technical foundation for Netscape's enterprise software offering. In 1999, In Sik with Marc Andreessen co-founded Loudcloud, a leading datacenter automation firm now called Opsware Inc. Currently In Sik is a venture advisor with Accel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
The mission of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology is to equip Berkeley students with the skills needed to innovate, lead, and commercialize technology in the global economy.
CET achieves its mission through a combination of teaching by industry leaders, research programs, and hands-on events, such as UC Berkeley's upcoming Technology Breakthrough Competition. On November 15, the finalists selected from a record number of 47 Berkeley researchers will present their breakthrough technologies to CET's panel of judges from the corporate and venture capital world. The winners, selected on the basis of which innovations have the potential to have the greatest impact in the next five years, will receive $25,000 in awards from the CET sponsors.
CET is affiliated with UC's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
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Maurice Gunderson Joins CMEA Ventures
Representatives of CMEA Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in high technology, life sciences and alternative energy investments, announced that Maurice E. P. Gunderson has joined the firm as Venture Partner focusing on investments in new and alternative energy sources and technologies.
CMEA Ventures focuses its investments on broad sectors that provide the maximum opportunity for value appreciation at the minimum risk. Building on its success in the high technology and life sciences industries and its understanding of the differences and nuances in these markets, CMEA Ventures brings deep experience to the energy sector, including partner experience and a long history of investing and growing companies in a variety of energy-related areas.
Throughout Gunderson's career, he has been instrumental in the development of alternative energy and cryogenic equipment, aircraft environmental systems, turbo-machinery and computer-based real-time control systems. Previously, Gunderson co-founded Nth Power, a venture capital firm specializing in investments emerging from the global restructuring of the energy industry. Prior to founding Nth Power, Gunderson spent more than 20 years developing profitable products and launched four successful companies.
Gunderson has also served on the boards of many energy technology companies, including Capstone Turbine, CellTech Power, Clean Air Power, Electronic Power Conditioning, H2Gen Innovations, Metallic Power, Nanogram, Nanogram Devices, NEOPhotonics, Pentech Solutions, Pentadyne Power and STM Power. Currently, he serves on the board of CMEA Ventures' portfolio company Superprotonic.
Gunderson earned an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University and Master of Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University. He is a member of several professional associations, including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Automotive Engineers and the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Gunderson is a patent holder, Registered Professional Engineer and pilot.
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Winner of Early-Stage Company Shootout Named
An Atlanta company emerged as the winner of the Early-Stage Shootout at the 2006 Southeastern BIO Investor Forum, which took place earlier in November at the InterContinental Buckhead Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.
The winner, Transfusion & Transplantation Technologies, Inc. (3Ti), a spin-out from Emory University, focuses on the design, patenting, and licensing of the next generation of specialized automated multianalyzers and other instrumentation for use in blood banks and blood centers.
Southeast BIO (SEBIO) officials reported that 430 people attended the Eighth Annual Southeastern BIO Investor Forum, one of the largest turnouts in the Forum's history. The Forum, designed to stimulate venture investment, is the Southeast's premier annual life sciences venture capital conference.
The Investor Forum, held November 8-10, offered an "early-stage" event focused on best practices for newly emerging companies and a "presenting companies" event which showcases a second group of companies that have already completed one "round" of institutional financing.
Early-stage participants introduced their companies to selected advisory teams which then chose four of the best to participate in the Early-Stage Shootout. During the Early-Stage Shootout, the companies had the opportunity to present to the entire conference and a panel of celebrity judges, made up of venture capitalists.
