Leveraging Australia’s existing foundation for impact

Dr. Chih Wei Teng, CCRM Australia

Dr. Chih Wei Teng is Chief Operating Officer for CCRM Australia.

Regulatory reforms, significant investments into infrastructure and focused grand challenge programs are very much like an economic and science arms race to develop the next blockbuster or vaccine, such as the current race to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Countries around the world are making bets on homegrown market leaders, creating favourable conditions to be the first therapy/vaccine to market, meeting local demand and capturing a piece of the global market share. Australia has similar ambitions.

With a distinguished history of fundamental regenerative medicine research and globally recognized medical centres such as the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Victoria and Royal Prince Alfred in New South Wales, Australia is well regarded in the Oceania region as a powerhouse in clinical trials. It appears that Australia has the necessary ingredients to enable its pursuit of regenerative world class therapies (1).

Yet, in certain corners, whispers exist about the lack of support or motivation in commercialization activities and overreliance on internationally derived medicines. COVID-19 has exposed some weaknesses in the supply chain and certainly foreign biopharmaceuticals can be persuaded, with the help of State and Federal Governments, to conduct manufacturing in Australia.

With the right elements in place, what is preventing the establishment of a “local cottage industry” that provides competition against global biopharmaceuticals or taking the fight internationally? If we listen hard enough to the whispers, we might hear the word fragmented. No one can deny that significant resources are required in commercialization and Australia certainly has those resources, but have we spread them too thin to be effective? Definitely not. So why is Australia not like South Korea that has the second highest number of approved regenerative medicine products for a small Asian country and many homegrown biopharmaceutical companies?

Focusing on the fragmented issue, and a core issue associated with it, is the challenge of finding the right infrastructure capabilities, expertise and funding. One excellent strategy by Therapeutic Innovation Australia was to bring together major cell and gene manufacturing capabilities from Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland under its National Collaboration Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide a common interface to biotechnology companies seeking to conduct manufacturing in cell, gene and cellular immunotherapies. This common interface makes it easy to find the expertise and capability needed, but also a voucher system to encourage access to said facilities. This is certainly a step in the right direction in solving the navigation issue.

Part of CCRM Australia’s strategy is to leverage unique translational platforms that address the key bottlenecks in regenerative medicine commercialization. Doing so requires an understanding of the Australian regenerative medicine sector’s capabilities and landscape to identify gaps in capabilities that need to be bridged, and coordinate/integrate existing Australian regenerative medicine infrastructure and facilities.

In working with our partners, such as Therapeutic Innovation Australia, we can leverage Australian facilities, introduce supplementary technologies, and coordinate support from other local and international partners to help orchestrate the necessary resources to help homegrown Australian biotechnology startups in their commercialization activities.

To give an example, CCRM Australia conducted a SuperPitch event in July 2020, which convened a panel of seven local and international venture funds and four selected Australian opportunities. The selection of venture funds was made to represent potential interests to fund regenerative medicine activities at different stages of the development cycle, not just those ready to commence clinical trials.

Voluntary support came from our closest partners, such as World Courier Ltd, who readily offered their assistance to the Australian firms in improving and polishing their pitch to the investors. On the investment side, the combination of local and international investors provided opportunities to share notes and insights into the technology and associated companies. Joint funding with local investors helps share the risk with international investors who are unfamiliar with the Australian sector. This provides a new injection of private capital and a gateway to the international venture capital community for local biotechnology companies ad researchers.

Since its establishment in 2018, CCRM Australia has consistently introduced new programs to the Australian regenerative medicine sector, such as an international mentorship program, exchanges between other CCRM affiliates, internships to encourage and inspire future bioentrepreneurs, and the formation of a cell and gene alliance, which led to the formation of CCRM Australia’s Attract business unit to assist translation and commercialization needs of both local as well as international biotechnology companies seeking a foothold in Australia.

With the recent Superpitch and ongoing discussions with good manufacturing practices (GMP) facility partners, CCRM Australia is growing its investor network and beginning to link Australia’s investment in manufacturing into the broader CCRM network, headquartered in Canada.

Where will this lead? One of the reasons for establishing CCRM Australia was to provide access to CCRM’s capital efficient commercialization model. Since its inception in 2011, Toronto-based CCRM has developed, implemented and improved this model to much success. In the coming months, CCRM Australia will begin to pool its programs and leverage them to bring impact to the Australian regenerative medicine sector. Watch this space.

References:

1. Clinical trials in Australia: the economic profile and competitive advantage of the sector. Available from: https://www.mtpconnect.org.au/images/MTPConnect%202017%20Clinical%20Trials%20in%20Australia%20Report.pdf.pdf

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CCRM Australia

CCRM Australia is the Australian Hub of the highly successful Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Canada (CCRM). Established as a not-for-profit with a national focus, CCRM Australia’s mission is to address bottlenecks in the translation and commercialization of regenerative medicine discoveries in Australia, many of which have the potential to cure some of the most devastating and costly diseases in the world today. CCRM Australia’s commercially focused solutions enable businesses and research partners to achieve their commercialization objectives by providing customized country, market and industry-specific support. To date, CCRM Australia has collaborated with researchers to advance their regenerative medicine technologies, evaluated and supported promising technologies to seek investment funding, facilitated commercialization training and worked with international biotechnology companies to set up their clinical trials in Australia. CCRM Australia continues to do so, while providing access to resources and expertise from other CCRM Hubs around the world.

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