Qkine, a specialist developer and manufacturer of proteins for stem cell, organoid and regenerative medicine applications, has closed a £1.5 million series A investment round to accelerate the global scale-up of its commercial operations and make key hires to its leadership team. The funding round attracted support from a wealth of leading life science funds and angel investors, including Parkwalk, a London-based firm that backs world-changing technologies emerging from the UK’s leading universities, who led the round; Jonathan Milner, serial entrepreneur and founder of Abcam; Martlet Capital, a Cambridge-based investor with a growing portfolio of innovative life science companies; and the fast-growing o2h ventures Human Health EIS fund.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UKs most active private equity managers, has invested an undisclosed amount in Zing Dev Limited, a technology services business.  Zing is a specialist implementation partner for Twilio, a market-leading cloud communication platform. As one of a small number of accredited implementation partners across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Zing offers consultancy and managed services for Twilio’s fully programmable cloud-based contact centre software.

RiskIQ, the world leader in attack surface management, has announced an investment from National Grid Partners (NGP), the venture and innovation arm of British multinational utility company National Grid plc. This funding will enable RiskIQ to bring its attack surface management, threat detection, and unique threat hunting capabilities to critical infrastructure industries, which face a host of unique security challenges entering the new decade.

Foresight Group's Foresight Global Real Infrastructure Fund has surpassed its target performance of UK CPI +3% over 12 months, with a total return 18.51%.  The Fund has provided a yield of 4.12% over 12 months exhibiting significantly lower volatility levels than higher risk asset classes such as high-yield debt.

Prime Advantage Capital Partners has participated in a fundraise for North-East based impact sensor developer HP1 Technologies.

Start-ups faced with an entirely new trading environment are being encouraged to use the next 100 days to carefully align their shifting commercial goals with an effective approach to IP or risk being left behind by innovative competitors.

NodThera, a clinical stage biotechnology company developing a new class of medicines that inhibit the NLRP3 inflammasome to treat diseases driven by chronic inflammation, has secured $55 million (£44 million) in a Series B financing. NodThera’s lead candidate, NT-0167, is being evaluated in a Phase 1 clinical trial in healthy volunteers.

Oxford Flow, the flow control equipment specialist, has raised £8.45m to fuel the company’s expansion across the utility and industrials markets, and oil and gas product development.

The funding has been secured from eight parties, with existing investors Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), Parkwalk, Oxford Investment Consultants and the University of Oxford contributing a total of £5.6m. The remaining amount is made up by GF Piping Systems, a division of Georg Fischer, a Swiss leader in fluid transfer equipment, individual investor Nick Harbinson and companies associated with GK Goh, the Singapore-based investment group.

Flusso, a semiconductor company spun out of the University of Cambridge, has raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round to scale up production of the world’s smallest flow sensor. The round was led by existing investor Parkwalk Advisors and new investor Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund, with participation from 24 Haymarket, Cambridge Enterprise, Martlet, and Cambridge Angels. With products already commercially available, the investment will also enable Flusso to widen its product and technology portfolio.

ROI has secured a £3m investment from BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growing businesses, to support its expansion into 12 cities across the UK and Europe. ROI is a lead generation technology company which allows small businesses to rent a highly optimised website which attracts more leads and ultimately boosts sales for these companies. ROI’s innovative proposition has had success in the home improvement and maintenance sector and is scaleable across different geographies and sectors.

The Danish workspace management startup Good Monday has just entered London following a $4M capital injection from the UK early-stage VC firstminute Capital, led by Brent Hoberman. Other investors are Creandum, Seed Capital, and PreSeed Ventures. In London, the first clients are already on board, and the UK office is up and running in Shoreditch with five employees.

British Business Investments Ltd has committed up to £40m to Columbia Lake Partners Fund II - CLP Growth II GBP SCSp - at its first close.

Columbia Lake Partners (CLP) is a London-based venture debt fund, providing growth capital term loans of £3-10m to venture capital backed technology businesses. The investments are a complement to traditional VC funding, allowing companies to grow with less dilutive capital. The fund can invest as part of an equity round, between equity rounds to allow a company more time to build enterprise value, or to fund an acquisition.