Duke-NUS unveils LIVE Ventures initiative for research commercialisation

Its first investment involves a project to develop new chronic inflammatory disease treatments.

Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School has launched LIVE Ventures, a $14.9m (S$20m) incubation programme designed to support commercialising academic research into clinical applications.

With an initial funding tranche of $7.4m (S$10m), the programme is set to support up to 20 of the institution’s research projects over the next five years.

According to Associate Professor Christopher Laing, Vice-Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke-NUS, the programme will look into projects with one to two years of development after the proof-of-concept stage.

These projects’ commercial prospects will be evaluated based on the level of innovation, validity and scalability, market potential, and investment interest.

Building on this, the initiative will first invest in a project developed by Associate Professor Lena Ho from the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Programme to identify novel and high-value targets for anti-inflammatory therapeutics.

Over the next two years, the project aims to identify at least three candidates with the therapeutic potential of reducing overactive inflammation in common diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel diseases and atopic dermatitis.

S$1 = $0.74