Here’s a collection of recent headlines from Wisconsin’s tech and innovation community:
—ProNAi Therapeutics’ recent $138 million initial public offering is a win for Capital Midwest Fund, a Milwaukee-area venture capital firm that invested $3.5 million in ProNAi through its Series C and D rounds, according to SEC filings. Capital Midwest holds more than 798,000 ProNAi shares, which means at today’s closing price of $26.81 per share, the VC fund’s stake is worth almost $21.4 million. That represents a return of more than six times what the firm invested. Capital Midwest and other previous shareholders agreed not to sell their ProNAi stock for 180 days after the IPO.
ProNAi is a Vancouver, BC-based cancer drug developer that was born in Michigan and has a research office in Plymouth, MI.
ProNAi’s IPO is the second exit by a portfolio company from Capital Midwest’s second fund, following Therapeutic Proteins International’s sale in 2012, general partner Dan Einhorn said. Capital Midwest is also out raising money for its third fund, which has a target of $100 million to $150 million and would be its largest fund so far.
—Madison-based Healthfinch has released its second software product, an application called Chirp. The company’s first product, Swoop, is an application that helps simplify the process of completing prescription refill requests. Now comes Chirp, a patient communication application that can tap into data stored by Swoop and help patients follow their care plans by notifying them when it’s time to schedule a visit to the doctor’s office for a checkup or to run lab tests, for example.
—The Milwaukee Institute received a $750,000 grant from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. that will be partly used to host new training courses in software engineering that will target local engineers, entrepreneurs, and researchers, according to a press release. The grant will also allow the nonprofit to expand its supercomputing resources that it makes available to big corporations, startups, and other nonprofits.
—Racine’s Ad-Tech Medical Instrument Corp. intends to move into new headquarters about 11 miles north in a new business park in Oak Creek, the Milwaukee Business Journal reported. Ad-Tech’s products include electrodes that are inserted into the brain to help treat epilepsy.
—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel profiled TAI Diagnostics, a company started by Medical College of Wisconsin researchers that is aiming to develop a blood-based test that would help determine if the body of a heart-transplant recipient is properly accepting the new heart. TAI has raised more than $6 million from investors, according to SEC filings.
