I spent an interesting evening at the London Technology Fund Competition 2009 Awards Ceremony on Wednesday.

The London Technology Fund Competition was established in 2008 to help address the equity gap for high potential technology businesses in London. The awards ceremony was held at the City headquarters of The Royal Bank of Scotland on 4 November, attended by some 200 representatives of major corporates, investors, and government, as well as entrepreneurs, academics, and professionals.

The awards are in various sectors ICT, Life Sciences, Engineering etc.

It was the life sciences division that was the most interesting this year. The three finalists were:

Trojantec
Trojantec is developing cancer stem therapeutics based on its platform technology of intracellular and intranuclear delivery of proteins. It has created, thus far, two novel nanoparticle fusion proteins, TR1 and TR4, that aim to achieve normal p21 delivery to p53/p21 mutated tumors (TR1) and inhibition of notch signalling (TR4) resulting in tumor eradication in preclinical models.

IXICO
IXICO provides clinical trial services to pharmaceutical companies helping them gather evidence of drug safety and efficacy through medical images.

Fertility Innovations
Fertility Innovations is developing technology designed to enable direct treatment for male infertility by activating non-motile sperm.

The winner was Trojantec as they were deemed to have the most attractive proposition to potential investors. All the finalists have been through many rounds of interviews and assessments meaning that a lot of due diligence has already been done for investors.

All of these companies were deemed to have a very bright future assuming they can raise the capital required to meet their growth targets.