Bio Bites: Doing Business in Boston

As the world’s largest biotech partnering event took place in Boston in June, MTPConnect was there introducing an Australian delegation to the Boston ecosystem, hosting business events to drive international collaborations and leading the Australian Pavilion to highlight Australia's fast-growing life sciences sector to the international biotech industry.

Our CEO Stuart Dignam was on the ground to find out why people are making the trip to BIO and what the buzz is all about. 

In this episode, Stuart speaks to Brent Owens, co-founder of Ballarat-based Vitrafy Life Sciences – a company pioneering cryopreservation technology and Brent Barnes, CEO and Manager Director of Adelaide-based Clever Culture Systems - inventor of APAS Independence, an intelligent microbiology culture plate reading technology that is revolutionising pharmaceutical lab work. These Australian start-ups have established a foothold in the US and are looking to expand and navigate the new tariff regime. 

Stuart also catches up with Professor Chris Molloy from the UK’s Medicines Discovery Catapult to get his take on BIO and find out more about the BIOBridge initiative and why collaboration is key to solving the world’s health challenges. 

For the support and partnership, MTPConnect would like to thank the state governments of NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, and the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Austrade, CSIRO and AusBiotech.

And thanks for the industry support from Moderna, Novartis, Australia & New Zealand, Cytiva, Sanofi, Arrotex Pharmaceuticals and Nutromics, and support for MTPConnect’s Australian delegation site visit program from CSL and Global Pharma Solutions. 

Chapters

• 0:01 Announcement
• 0:36 Intro
• 1:32 Vitrify's Cryopreservation Technology
• 8:33 Clever Culture Systems' US Strategy
• 13:16 Building Bridges for Global Collaboration
• 20:11 Australian Success at BIO Conference
• 24:36 Upcoming Opportunities and Closing

Transcript

Natalie Vella: 0:01

This is the MTP Connect podcast, connecting you with the people behind the life-saving innovations driving Australia's growing life sciences sector from bench to bedside for better health and well-being. Mtp Connect acknowledges the traditional owners of country that this podcast is recorded on and recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australia's first storytellers and the holders of first science knowledge.

Caroline Duell: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the MTP Connect podcast. I'm Caroline Duell. As the world's largest biotech partnering event took place in Boston in June, MTP Connect was there introducing an Australian delegation to the Boston ecosystem, hosting business events to drive international collaborations and leading the Australian Pavilion to highlight Australia's fast-growing life sciences sector to the international biotech industry. Our CEO, Stuart Dignam, was there on the ground, discovering why people make the effort to do business at Bio and what the buzz is all about. Stuart spoke to a couple of Australian start-ups that have established a foothold in the US and are already exporting, looking to expand and navigate the new tariff regime. First up, let's hear from Brent Owens, co-founder of Ballarat-based Vitrify Life Sciences, a company pioneering cryopreservation technology.

Brent Owens: 1:32

My name is Brent Owens. I am one of the co-founders and deputy CEO of Vitrify Life Sciences, a cryopreservation technology company founded in Ballarat, regional Victoria, and now headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria.

Stuart Dignam: 1:44

Can you just tell us a bit about?

Brent Owens: 1:46

your actual product. What is it? Yeah, so fundamentally, in its simplest form, we have a cryopreservation freezing device. So the critical phase which causes a lot of the cellular death, is the process of freezing. So it's not once it's stored, it's the process of freezing and how you change that temperature from a liquid to a solid. We have a system that can control that, use a series of inputs to be able to reconfigure that and tailor it in a very novel way to mitigate a lot of those problems that occur with legacy systems. So we have a freezing device and we have a software platform that goes with that to enable that intelligence to be executed in the device itself.

Stuart Dignam: 2:28

And when it comes time to use that frozen product, how do you unfreeze it, and is that tricky as well.

Brent Owens: 2:37

It is Well if you think about at home. If you thaw out a frozen chicken, it often leaves all the liquid at the bottom. That's essentially the cells exploding and dying. It's the same in biological materials that are used for human health. Thawing or defrosting is essentially as important as the freezing process. So we have our own thawing technology as well to do the back end of it, so that the cell damage doesn't occur when it's thawed out as well. It's equally as important as freezing.

Stuart Dignam: 3:10

So if I was to go around the US and wherever else in the world, where would I see your product being used?

Brent Owens: 3:19

I would say primarily next to every collection bed that there is where blood is collected, where raw material for cell and gene therapy production is collected. Yeah, that's the primary place. Secondly would be where they a CDMO, where they manufacture those products into drugs and used in research and the likes as well.

Stuart Dignam: 3:39

And being a Melbourne company and with a big operation in Ballarat, how do you manage that when you're supplying global markets?

Brent Owens: 3:50

I guess there's the novelty of what we do is providing quality outcomes, and that's not just selling someone a piece of equipment and then saying see you later. We want to stay close to customer continuous improvement and always innovating, and that's a key part of we want to. We started by innovating and we want to continue to innovate. The site in Ballarat is essentially the innovation and optimization center, so when we started and through the first founding years, it was everything because that was our only site. As it's evolved, we've still got a lot of our know-how, ip capability and product development skill sets based in Ballarat, and they'll continue to operate that site as an innovation and optimisation hub. How many staff have you got? We're pushing into 30 now, so it is growing. We think that we're probably going to be closer to 40 by the end of the year. That's more in North America, though, as we build out. So yeah, we're growing.

Stuart Dignam: 4:47

And obviously and it's been the talk of this conference there are a few tariff issues going on, a few, you know, trade-type issues, regulatory issues with the FDA and staffing and so forth. What are your?

Brent Owens: 5:02

You must be keeping an eye on that for the good of your business Absolutely, and I think you have to focus on what you can control. The rest you just have to adapt. That's the way it is. So one way that we've looked at de-risking is ensuring that we have US-based manufacturing. That's a core part of it. We've got significant collaborators in the US government that would require US manufacturing anyway. So there's multiple data points that sort of mean that we should have a US manufacturing capability, of which we do.

Stuart Dignam: 5:37

So I talk to a lot of start-ups and SMEs and they're all, by and large, either have some sort of a presence in the US or are looking for a presence in the US, or are looking for a presence in the US. Are there particular states or cities that make it easier for you to make a decision about where you're going to be based? Any observations on that?

Brent Owens: 5:57

Yeah, there's a few different things to consider. I think that you know, above the and beyond the standard things like tax and capability and skills and those types of things we have to consider time zone differences, logistics, because we do fly people out, and I guess there's only a few areas that you would really want to focus on with that and manufacturing and logistics being on the west coast. But naturally, biotech is on the east coast, where we are right now. So maybe somewhere in between, like austin, texas or somewhere like that, there's a lot of military personnel down in texas as well, so that makes sense to us. But that's the benefit of bio everyone's pitching for us to be at their location, so I guess that gives us a choice and have you found boston Just getting around this ecosystem?

Stuart Dignam: 6:48

you know they say Kendall Square is the most innovative square mile on the planet and there's lots of money around here. And how have you found it.

Brent Owens: 6:57

I do love Boston. I find that it actually is quite similar to Melbourne when it's summer, not so much when it's winter, but I like it's clean, good people, smart people. It's progressive, open to innovation, welcome innovation, because it's an innovative city. I would say that it's the biotech hub of the world really and it's worthwhile having some presence here because networking and the networks here is sort of a could be a make or break type thing. That's how. That's how important boston is.

Stuart Dignam: 7:30

I got one more question in all of your dealings with all of your clients over here, does the team australia brand? Does that resonate in your discussions?

Brent Owens: 7:39

it does and I actually expanding on I would say it's. I try and echo that myself. I do believe that Australia as a nation has the capability to be world leading in some areas, particularly research, supplying, APAC, expanding the US. But I don't think it's an individual company style. I think it is a national strategy and people do resonate with that because they often don't know a lot about Australia, they see it as one place. They don't really go as granular as state by state and the nuances within it. I think you lose people when you go to that level. So speaking as one nation, I think is a really powerful message that we should continue to talk like that.

Stuart Dignam: 8:25

Great to learn more about your company and what you're doing, and best of luck.

Brent Owens: 8:29

Excellent, thank you.

Stuart Dignam: 8:30

Appreciate it.

Brent Barnes: 8:33

Brent Barnes, clever Culture Systems, proudly headquartered in Adelaide, south Australia, so we automate culture plate reading. So when we think about manufacturing of biological drugs, those manufacturing processes are done in a clean room, and so our technology automates a really critical part of that manufacturing workflow. Ultimately, that ties into releasing safe and effective drugs to patients all around the world. And so you know, when we talk about manufacturing we get high interest around this critical process, and so that's what we do.

Stuart Dignam: 9:03

And I should you know, in the interest of full disclosure, mtp Connected provides some funding early on for the development of your company. So how's business, brent?

Brent Barnes: 9:13

Look really good. The US is a big market. For us it's an important market. It's the first time we've come to bio and you know I can't get over the scale of this conference. You think all the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world are here with their key decision makers, ceos, presidents. What have you from big pharma all the way through to kind of startups. It's a lot of energy here.

Stuart Dignam: 9:34

And how do you approach kind of navigating that madness?

Brent Barnes: 9:37

Yeah, a lot of preparation kind of goes into these conferences ahead of time. So the partnering session is obviously good ahead of time. So the partnering session is obviously good. But then there's a lot of resources that you know through MTP Connect actually, and through, you know, austrade, have been able to help kind of get these meetings set up ahead of time. But really a lot of preparation. The days that we're here is kind of the outcome of really what has been weeks of preparation ahead of this.

Stuart Dignam: 9:57

And the quality of the meetings that you've got and the engagements that you've had. Is it helping grow your business?

Brent Barnes: 10:05

For us it's varied, to be honest. I think for our company we had some really important meetings set up that were critical for kind of our strategy going forward. And then there's a bunch of meetings that you kind of fill in around that. So you know, it's always hard to tell. I wouldn't say there's 100% kind of hit rate here, but you know, I think the key meetings were important. That's there's a hundred percent kind of hit rate here, but you know, I think the key meetings were important. That's why we were here. And then there's, you know, been a portfolio of meetings that have kind of different levels of interest and tell us about your interest in the US market in particular.

Brent Barnes: 10:35

Yeah, I mean the US is the largest single market for us. All of the big pharma headquarters that we're dealing with are typically kind of have some presence here, and so you know I'm probably here three or four times a year. We have got a local resource here in the US looking to kind of expand and as a platform, as a platform to grow.

Stuart Dignam: 10:54

And I know you do have some really good contracts with certain companies that either will be named or not. How has that helped in the growth of your company?

Brent Barnes: 11:04

It's a tremendous help. So AstraZeneca are our beachhead customer, you know, and it's really great to be able to say we launched this product a year ago. They've now bought nine of our instruments. They've rolled it out to their largest manufacturing site. So we're talking multiple countries all around the world and multiple instruments, and when you've got a name like that, it certainly gets people's attention. And also, bristol-myers Square. We've got a couple of sites here now that are using it here in the US. So that's a very relevant discussion as well.

Stuart Dignam: 11:32

You can't avoid the tariff talk and the whole kind of shifting of the tectonic plates of this sector in the US. How have you approached that? Everybody's talking about it here.

Brent Barnes: 11:46

Yeah, so we've had a couple of shipments that have had the tariffs kind of placed on it. It hasn't been an issue for us. I kind of taking a step back. If you Google like pharma manufacturing in the US, you'll see billions of dollars of investment. So actually what it's created is an avalanche of investment coming here into the US, where you've got pharmaceutical companies expanding existing facilities, building new greenfield sites but looking to optimise their workflow along the way. So it's actually quite brilliant for us. We see this as a real opportunity in years to come.

Stuart Dignam: 12:15

To come here.

Brent Barnes: 12:16

Absolutely yeah.

Stuart Dignam: 12:17

That's terrific, and I must ask you about the pavilion, the Team Australia presence. Does that assist you with the work that you're doing here at Bayer?

Brent Barnes: 12:27

It's always great to have a home base, and for Team Australia, what has been really intriguing is having meetings of my own and people talk about Team Australia or Australian companies, and you know just how excited they were about it. So you know we have a big presence here and that has its own energy associated with it, and it's also amazing you find yourself collaborating with the Australians that you don't get that opportunity to when you're at home, and so it's another great way of actually kind of doing that local business development.

Stuart Dignam: 12:56

You know, here in Boston yeah, it is like team is the operative word. It becomes a bit of a team, a bit of a community and we all help each other navigate this crazy conference.

Brent Barnes: 13:05

Yeah, we absolutely do, it's. Great.

Stuart Dignam: 13:08

Brent, thank you and thanks for joining the podcast and continued good luck with your business.

Brent Barnes: 13:13

You too. Thanks, Stuart.

Chris Molloy: 13:16

Hi, I'm Chris Malloy, Chief Executive of the Medicines Discovery Catapult in the UK.

Stuart Dignam: 13:20

Now, Chris. Why are you at Bio in Boston?

Chris Molloy: 13:24

This is where the industry comes to spawn and it's the place where you have a huge concentration effect, so you can understand what the market is feeling, what it's wanting, where its demand signals are, the zeitgeist, the, the investor confidence, and that helps you plot a course to the future.

Stuart Dignam: 13:42

We're here at a most interesting time. What intelligence have you picked up about where we are at as a sector and maybe about the way we are engaging with each other globally?

Chris Molloy: 13:55

The world has changed. The competitive forces that were alive for the last 20 years have been fundamentally changed. Where the world is looking now for a source of its new molecules is changing, and the value of those licensing agreements is changing. So some of the big structural elements that have held this market together for a generation are now uncertain, and for that reason it's all the more important that those of a like mind and shared cultures and values build bridges to help them do their R&D more effectively and ultimately, to get medicines to patients faster.

Stuart Dignam: 14:41

You wouldn't mean a bio bridge, would you?

Chris Molloy: 14:43

Bio bridge is exactly what I mean. So what we must do, and what we should do in a Commonwealth for Common Health, is make sure that our biotechs and our services companies have the minimum friction to work with each other and to help each other get those medicines to patients more quickly. And I think that the work of governments, the work of regulators and the work of agents of change is aligned around that now, and all the more so with the geopolitical situation that we face.

Stuart Dignam: 15:13

Yeah, it's not a question of things are shifting. They have shifted and now is the time to kind of reimagine how we do business, really.

Chris Molloy: 15:24

Yeah there's no reverse gear on this, so we've all got to look forward to how we're going to be developing new, more complex, more precise, more targeted medicines for a global market in a changed world, and I think it's fair to say that no one has the absolute answer to this. But what we do need to do is make sure that we, outside bio and this convention, have a concentration based effect that's going to deliver real value, and I think the BioBridge program helps to do that.

Stuart Dignam: 15:57

Let's talk about that a little bit. I mean, we've been talking about it for a while. What is the opportunity from creating a BioBridge? I know Australia and the UK. You know we've got heritage, we know each other, we like each other, we're used to dealing with each other. Kind of makes sense. But what tangible benefits could come from us establishing a well-nurtured, well-supported bio bridge?

Chris Molloy: 16:23

It's about getting medicines to patients faster.

Chris Molloy: 16:26

If we're not doing that, then we've lost our North Star, we've lost our purpose.

Chris Molloy: 16:31

So the tangible benefits, I hope, of a bio bridge, which leverage the access consortium of our regulators, is to make sure we can do multi-jurisdictional R&D from the get-go, increasing asset values for everybody, increasing access to services, increasing access to co-investment.

Chris Molloy: 16:49

And these really tangible activities make money move and they make medicines move, and that is what every bridge that's ever been built does. And governments build bridges, companies and people then use them. And it's the role, I think, of those of us all who are agents in this to create those highways with minimum friction that allow companies to move most effectively. And we're not playing sort of tug of war between our nations with biotech companies. We're enabling them to go to and fro across the bridge in a two-way traffic that gets their R&D done in a most efficient way, in the fastest way and provides more visibility to investors. And only if we do that will we really maximize the value of the access consortium of our regulators, the free trade agreements that we have between our governments and the agents of change on in both ends of the bridge who want to make this happen yeah, it's.

Stuart Dignam: 17:51

uh, it's kind of like if you've ever had a bold idea, now is the time to back it in. Never been a better time to do it and that focus on a patient and better health, better well-being, living longer, better that's kind of what's motivating all of us.

Chris Molloy: 18:11

Yeah, it is what gets most people who are here today out of bed every single day. And we've got to not just believe it and talk single day. And we we've got to not just believe it and talk about it, but we've got to act upon it. And that's really my purpose here at bio to build those relationships to allow us to build the blueprints for those bridges and make them realizable so that everyone goes. Yeah, you know, I use the bridge, didn't we always? And there are so many activities that go on that each country, each of our nations does to aid biotech, to try and make multi-jurisdictional work, and what the BioBridge program is doing is trying to pull all of those into one place and one space.

Stuart Dignam: 18:51

You worked with us on our diagnostics action plan, and a key element of that was kind of a one-stop shop to just cut through everything so people could know what to do, when to do it, how to do it. That's kind of a version of this, isn't it?

Chris Molloy: 19:07

Absolutely it is. You need a safe landing space. Companies who come to a new jurisdiction to do part of their multi-jurisdictional R&D there need to know who's who. They need a concierge service. They need folks who understand their own landscape and are willing to help others bed into it, and so there's a service element to this, no doubt. And if we can be at the service not just of our own services companies and our own biotechs, but those Commonwealth for Common Health partners that we have, then really everybody wins. And in all of these things there are stuff that is at risk and stuff that we can gain, and everyone just needs to, I think, hold hands around this in very, very uncertain times and, as you said, now is the time for bold ideas and just getting it done 100% and really pleased to be chatting with you here at Bio.

Stuart Dignam: 20:08

What about your day job? How's things going back in the UK with the catapult?

Chris Molloy: 20:13

So the Medicines Discovery catapult continues to deliver for its community, and its community is national as well as international. We do three things. We de-risk new technologies that will drive productivity in R&D and we make sure that they are adopted through our services business. Secondly, we work with young companies and make them fit to fund by giving them robust industry class R&D plans, access to technology and, in some cases, access to capital. And then we run ambitious national and international R&D collaborative programmes in areas that industry finds a high risk in dementia, in psychiatry, in AMR, in cystic fibrosis and develop unique virtual institutes in areas like complex medicines delivery. These things, we hope, add value to the community. They certainly allow companies to access money and we've worked with many hundreds of companies across the UK and helped them leverage about £1.3 billion worth of private investment. And that making money move, making medicines move is our motivation.

Stuart Dignam: 21:20

It's the notion that if we can accelerate a company to be successful commercially, that means they've brought their drug to the market for the benefit of a patient. So it's a commercial success, but also a win for a patient.

Chris Molloy: 21:37

It absolutely is as the end game. But we've all got to recognise that if we're talking about early stage biotech, that can be at some distance from clinical delivery and marketability. However, value for a biotech can be measured in other ways too the licensing deals, the fundraisings that progress towards that marketability and patient access. Marketability and patient access. So we've got to look at that and say, can we make sure that every single one of our biotechs whose science meets a demand signal is made fit to fund? Because there's only one reason in any of our nations that biotechs should fail and that is if the science doesn't meet the demand signal that a patient has. There is no other good excuse that I have seen for why a biotech should fail. They were in the wrong place, they didn't know what they didn't know, they didn't have access. These, I find, are unacceptable excuses for the failure of companies whose science could save lives.

Stuart Dignam: 22:38

So, as you're walking around this conference and taking the meetings that you're taking, walking around this conference and taking the meetings that you're taking, are you finding there's a kind of a consensus around everybody's trying to build bridges to new places, taking advantage of new opportunities because of the changes that are occurring?

Chris Molloy: 22:54

I think, yes, some of that's a reaction, some of it is more forward thinking, a more deliberative, and I think the the deliberative discussions that we have been having with with Commonwealth partners over the last year or so under the free trade agreement that that we have, particularly between the UK and Australia, enables those discussions to move from theory to delivery, and that's what I want to see in the next 12 months before we're in bio in San Diego.

Stuart Dignam: 23:26

And maybe we can be making some announcements in San Diego this time next year. Chris, thank you so much for chatting to the podcast.

Chris Molloy: 23:33

Great pleasure. Thanks very much. Great to see you.

Caroline Duell: 23:36

That was Professor Chris Molloy from the Medicines Discovery Catapult discussing why he travels from the UK to bio, the value of international collaboration to solve the world's health challenges and the BioBridge initiative. A special shout out to our bio partners and sponsors for working together with us to make the eye-catching Australian Pavilion such a success and all the special events possible. A huge thank you for the support and partnership from the state governments of New South Wales, victoria, queensland, western Australia and South Australia, the Department of Industry, science and Resources, austrade, csiro and Ausbiotech. We also had fantastic industry support from Moderna Novartis Australia in New Zealand, cytiva, sanofi, arotex Pharmaceuticals and Neutromix and support for our Australian delegation from CSL and Global Pharma Solutions. You can join our next international trade mission to the MedTech Conference in San Diego in October. Register now to take part and check out our Going Global website page for more details.

Caroline Duell: 24:51

You've been listening to the MTP Connect podcast. This podcast is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people here in Narm, melbourne. Thanks for listening to the show. If you love what you heard, share our podcast and follow us for more Until next time. Thanks for listening to the show. If you love what you heard, share our podcast and follow us for more Until next time.