Australian biotech for sale

Any doubts as to the marketability of the Australian biotech and life sciences industries were thoroughly dispelled this week with 150 investors from more than 100 companies - foreign and Australian - attending AusBiotech’s Australasian Life Sciences Investment Summit in Melbourne as part of AusBiotech 2010.

In addition to representatives from several funds managers, Angel investors and VCs were representatives from some of the largest pharma companies in the world including Pfizer, Merck, Sanofi Aventis, GlaxoSmithKine and Eli Lilly.

According to Dr Rob Armstrong, VP global external R&D and the Chorus Group, Lilly Research Laboratories, over the last three years Eli Lilly has invested more than $US8 billion in partnerships and acquisitions globally.

However, while the company is “scouring the globe” looking for opportunities, it sees the Australian life sciences and biotech sectors as especially attractive.

“There’s a mature combination of robust academic achievement [ in Australia ] as well as a track history of putting together companies,” he said, adding that “it’s the translation and commercialisation of these opportunities moving forward that is one of the areas that we feel we can contribute to.”

Eli Lilly already has partnerships with two Australian biotechs, dendrimer specialists Starpharma as well as drug delivery company Acrux. Armstrong is currently in Australia to speak with a number of other local biotechs, although he refused to name any of them.

Last May Eli Lilly announced that it was contributing around $50 million towards the Queensland government’s newly announced $US250 million biotech fund.

This week Armstrong met with Victorian minister for environment, climate change and innovation Gavin Jennings to discuss opportunities for Eli Lilly to play a greater role in the state’s biotech efforts. Earlier in the week Victorian premier John Brumby announced that the government would give $55 million to support development of the Victorian biotechnology sector with a view to making it more competitive and productive as well as a driver of economic growth and jobs creation for the state.

According to AusBiotech COO Glenn Cross, the local biotech and life sciences sectors appear have reached a new level of maturity with many key companies reaching or surpassing key milestones in the last 12 months. Reflecting this fact, he said, was an unprecedented level of interest from local funds managers at this year’s event.

“Last year there really wasn’t all that much interest from local funds managers at all,” Cross said.

He noted a number of key companies driving the change in sentiment, including regenerative medicine specialists Mesoblast, infectious diseases company Biota Holdings, respiratory disease interest Pharmaxis, drug delivery hopefuls Acrux and cancer company ChemGenex to name a few.

“Australia has an international reputation for its research capabilities, but increasingly we are expanding this reputation to include an ability to extract the value of these efforts through later stage licensing, investments, technology acquisition, and mergers,” said Dr Anna Lavelle, CEO of AusBiotech. “These efforts are now being recognised as equally, if not more important, than our efforts in proceeding down the commercialisation path alone.”