Investment company seeks to invest $50 million in biotech

Australian Technology Innovations Fund (ATIF), a Brisbane-based private investment company, is seeking to invest $50 million in biotechnology projects and companies.

ATIF chairman Stephen Jones said the fund's objective was to invest up to $50 million into the Australian market in the next 18 months to 2 years, through seed investments into companies.

The company, established in November 2001, has three key players - Jones, Dr Wolf Hanisch and Dr Michael Monsour - and has money coming in from investors in the US and Europe.

Jones said Hanisch was very well connected internationally - he was the first scientist to purify beta-interferon, a discovery now worth $1.5 million.

"We want to find projects that have a synergies with areas in which we have our invested dollars, by either direct purchase of projects or direct acquisition of a company," he said.

This week, ATIF took a 17.5 per cent shareholding in Sydney-based biomedical company Psiron, after underwriting a rights issue that raised $1.5 million dollars for the company. The issue offered shareholders two shares and an option for every three shares held, closed at the end of March 2002.

Psiron CEO Ron van der Pluijm said the company now had "a much more stable register" which will allow it to complete a restructure.

Psiron is also a majority stakeholder in diagnostic business Analytica, and also develops its own IP for treatments for psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.

ATIF's initial investments have been in Psiron, Analytica and CBio. The latter is a Queensland biotech going into Phase I clinical trials for EPF, a drug to treat multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Jones and Hanisch are on the boards of both CBio and Psiron.

"The initial investments in these three biotechnology companies have been to focus on anti-inflammatory, ant-cancer and auto-immune disease therapies," Jones said.

"We have a desire to get involved in medical devices in the future and than we will be satisfied with our business outcomes," he said.