Growth capital investor, BGF has exited its investment in Nottingham-based life sciences incubation business, BioCity.  

BGF backed BioCity in January 2019 with funding facilitating BioCity’s investment into a number of seed-stage life sciences businesses. BGF has also invested alongside BioCity in deals such as its investment into North West-headquartered proteomic-data science and diagnostics company, Kinomica, in November last year.   

o2h Ventures, a UK based fund manager through investment in its SEIS and EIS human health funds has made an investment into Stingray Bio Ltd, a new spin out from the University of Sussex supported by the Sussex Innovation Centre.

Oxitec Ltd, the leading developer of insect-based biological solutions to control pests that transmit disease, destroy crops, and harm livestock, has received US$6.8 million in funding from the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable foundations, to fund scale-up programs for Oxitec’s just-add-water Friendly™ Aedes aegypti technology.

A team of top scientists from the University of Bristol have formed a new biotech company that is developing ground-breaking and newly patented potential treatments for Coronavirus.

Bristol-based Halo Therapeutics is backed by Charles Grimsdale (former Eden Ventures), Keith MacDonald and Mark Farmer (of Eden Ventures) and a group of Angels from the Bristol area.  It was founded by the team of leading scientists who made a recent breakthrough discovery, which was published in Science Magazine. They found that exposing the SARS-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) virus to a free fatty acid called linoleic acid locks the virus’s spike protein into a closed, non-infective form stopping it in its tracks.

SomaServe Ltd, a pioneer in nanomedicines for crossing biological barriers has completed a highly successful, oversubscribed Series A funding of £2.1m.

The funding round was jointly led by Origin Capital and Meltwind, and had follow on investment from all existing investors including Abcam and o2H Ventures. The success of this funding round is testament to the progress made with collaborators in evaluating PolyNaut® for penetrating the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the launch by Abcam of PolyNaut®-Dye products.

Maven Equity Finance, part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) and managed by Maven Capital Partners, has led a £2 million funding round for LCC (Liverpool Chirochem Limited), an international chemical technology business whose products form the building blocks to the research and development of new drugs. The NPIF - Maven Equity Fund invested £1 million, alongside the £1 million from the Government’s Future Fund.

Maxwellia, a business that is poised to transform the UK’s self-care market has secured a £3.2m investment in a funding round led by Praetura Ventures.

Maxwellia, which is based at Alderley Park in Cheshire, aims to give people easier and faster access to the treatments they need by converting prescription-only medicines to versions that can be bought in a pharmacy.

Following the initial investment in 2019, IW Capital has led the second round of funding to support the exciting development of this fast-growing business. Over the past year, Flarin has seen expansion through sales of Flarin Joint and Muscular Pain Relief into mass multiples such as Boots, Superdrug, Sainsbury, Morrisons as well as Amazon, Ocado and other online retailers.

QVentures has invested in Béa Fertility, bringing at-home fertility treatments to the UK. Healthcare start-up Béa Fertility has raised $1m to bring a pioneering at-home fertility treatment to the UK. QVentures joins the round led by Calm/Storm VC and which includes an innovation grant from the recent Innovate UK SMART competition.

Wysdom Dental Technologies has received £200,000 from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, East & South East Midlands Debt Finance Fund, managed by Maven Capital Partners.

The Milton Keynes-based business plans to use the funding to invest in product development and launch its latest cloud-based software for dental practices in the UK.

Scottish bio-tech company, BioCaptiva, has developed a novel next generation “liquid biopsy” technology device that could revolutionise the early diagnosis and monitoring of difficult to detect cancers.  The University of Edinburgh spin-out has raised over £1m in seed funding from Edinburgh-based business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, and Scottish Enterprise, to help develop the technology.  To prepare the company for this next stage in its development, BioCaptiva has appointed Dr Frank Armstrong FRCPE as non-executive chairman and Dr Stephen Little as a non-executive director.

Baseimmune, the early-stage UK biotech startup, is combining big data and biological expertise to predict how viruses will change and identify ‘future-proof’ antigens that will form the crucial elements of the next generation of vaccines.  In order to further the development of its platform and start pre-clinical development in the lab, Baseimmune has secured a £685,000 investment, led by European university VC fund, Creator Fund, and includes Mike Watson, ex-president of Moderna's infectious disease spin-out with the support of Vaccitech and Oxford University. Maki VC and Rockmount Seed Investments also joined the round.