SciVentures, Griffith team up on $1.3m start-up funds

SciVentures Investments and Griffith University have teamed up to provide AUD$1.3 million of pre-seed funding to two Griffith University start-ups.

Cancer vaccine developer Genvax will receive up to $690,000 to commercialise a cancer vaccine technology. Dr Stephen Ralph, deputy director of Griffith's Genomics Research Centre, invented the technology when he was at Victoria's Monash University and has continued the research at Griffith. Animal studies have shown the Genvax technology activates killer T-cells to target and eliminate tumour cells in mammals.

And a technology which could conduct water-testing analysis in real time, rather than in hours or days, will receive $610,000 from SciVentures and Griffith. The photo-electrochemical technology was invented by Dr Huijun Zhao, an environmental chemist in the School of Environmental and Applied Sciences at Griffith.

SciVentures' pre-seed fund was established in 2002, and is one of three life-science funds supported by the federal government's $100 million pre-seed fund program, aimed at providing the commercial boost required to move science out of the lab. The others are Starfish Ventures and the Rothschild Genesis Fund, now managed by GBS Venture Partners.