New £100 million fund launched to help commercialise UCL research

Fund 2 follows the success of the first UCL Technology Fund. The first fund made 45 investments, including 27 that became spinout companies and programmes intended for licencing. These companies and programmes have since raised external funding exceeding £1 billion and created over 570 jobs.

Other successes include:

• two successful Nasdaq Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) by gene therapy spinouts Orchard Therapeutics and MeiraGTx
• a potential upcoming IPO by Freeline Therapeutics 
• Bloomsbury AI, an artificial intelligence company that joined Facebook’s London research team in 2018

Dr Celia Caulcott, Vice-Provost (Enterprise), said: "UCL’s first Technology Fund is playing a vital role in translating ideas developed by UCL’s researchers into applications and products to benefit society and the economy. It’s a great step that we can announce the first close of the second fund.

"We look forward to this fund investing in intellectual property arising from UCL’s research, taking technologies from proof of concept to commercialisation, through licensing and company creation."

The UCL Technology Fund is managed by AlbionVC and UCL Business (UCLB), the university’s commercialisation company and part of UCL Innovation & Enterprise.

Read the full story on the UCL News website.

UCL staff can contact their UCLB Business Manager to explore how the fund can help you.

Links

Find out more about:

• UCL Technology Fund
• UCLB
• AlbionVC
• Innovation and enterprise support for UCL staff 
• Facebook buying Bloomsbury AI
• Orchard Therapeutics
• MeiraGTx

Photo © UCL Technology Fund