A startup that is working on a better way to approach difficult-to-treat cancers won first place at one of the top-ranked accelerator programs in the nation.
Alnair, a preclinical stage precision oncology company, was named the top startup at the 27th annual University of Chicago New Venture Challenge last week.
The company is trying to develop a new drug delivery platform that leverages cancer metabolism to better target and penetrate cancer cells.
"It works in mice. Now the question is, it's a long road to see if it works in people," Steve Kaplan, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the UChicago Booth School of Business and director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, told Chicago Inno.
Alnair received an investment of $585,000 for winning first place.
Finishing second was reObital, a startup aiming to create fiber optic core out of a type of glass. EverLeather, a startup that wants to become a leader in luxury leather pieces, got third place. Each of the Top 3 finishers received investments of more than $300,000.
"The investment can be transformational and extremely important in getting them on the road to success," Kaplan said.
A total of $1.4 million was awarded to the 10 teams that competed in the finals last week. All of the startups are led by MBA students at the UChicago.
Kaplan was impressed with the range of the startups that competed.
The signature venture competition for MBA students at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business saw startups in software, medtech, supply chain companies and more.
While there's been a slowdown in the VC market over the past year, Kaplan thinks it's less pronounced for early-stage startups.
"There's this view that there's been a blow up in the venture market and it's very tough times and the fact is that the companies that have real issues are the ones that raised a lot of money at high valuations in 2020 and 2021 that are running out of cash," he said. "For the seed and early stage startups it's a little less frothy than it was in 2021 but it's not all that different from 2018 or 2019."
Since it launched in 1996, the New Venture Challenge — officially called the Edward L. Kaplan '71, New Venture Challenge — has graduated more than 370 startup companies that have raised more than $1.2 billion in funding and have reached more than $8.5 million in mergers and exits, launching such companies as Gruhub, Venmo and Simple Mills.
