Float Bioscience Selected as NST Preliminary Convergence Startup Team… Up to 100 Million KRW in Support

The National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST) announced on the 11th that it held a Pre-Demo Day to review the business plans and directions of prospective founders, and selected the first preliminary convergence startup team for its "Government-Funded Research Institute (GRI) Convergence-Type Startup" initiative.

The GRI Convergence-Type Startup is an initiative promoted through the "GRI Commercialization Joint Promotion Task Force," which NST launched in April. Its goal is to create innovative products and services that do not yet exist in the market through technology-based startups formed by combining researchers and technologies from different government-funded research institutes.

To this end, NST recruited prospective founders from among GRI researchers and identified three preliminary convergence startup candidate teams through a convergence startup camp. It then provided professional consulting and mentoring to help these teams refine their convergence startup concepts.

Through a Pre-Demo Day format, NST's selection evaluation committee — composed of startup experts — chose one team out of the three candidates as the official preliminary convergence startup team.

The selected team is Float Bioscience, consisting of researchers from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM). The team is developing and commercializing a urine-based early bladder cancer diagnostic kit capable of uniform mass production.

NST will provide Float Bioscience with in-kind support of up to 100 million KRW in commercialization costs. It also plans to offer connections to public technology commercialization accelerators, office space, direct investment of 200 million KRW or more in the future, and linkage to the TIPS program.

NST Chairman Kim Bok-cheol stated, "We hope this first preliminary convergence startup team will lead to a successful founding and serve as a pioneering model for convergence-type startups," adding, "We look forward to seeing the outcomes of government-funded research institutes spread throughout society through various initiatives, ultimately strengthening national competitiveness."