WA mining billionaire Andrew Forrest has turned his investment attention to the health tech sector, with a new $250 million venture capital fund. The VC, Tenmile, is being backed by Tattarang, the Fortescue Metal Group founder’s private investment company. Tenmile will target startups focused on unmet medical needs that support sustainable and equitable healthcare, offering seed… Read more »
Brisbane startup Infensa Bioscience has raised $23 million to develop a potentially life-saving treatment using deadly spider venom to prevent the damage caused by heart attacks and stroke. The biotech venture, spun out of University of Queensland, uses a molecule in the venom of the K’gari (Fraser Island) funnel-web spider, as the possible drug solution,… Read more »
Healthcare superannuation fund HESTA has revealed that it chipped in $4.4 million to a $35 million Series B for Sydney biotech startup Inventia Life Science. The deal marks the first direct investment made by a super fund into an early-stage startup. The industry has previously tipped their cash into venture capital funds, with the VCs… Read more »
Biotech startup Ankere Therapeutics has raised $10 million in Seed capital to develop new therapies targeting inflammatory diseases, especially in the lungs. The funding round was co-led by IP Group and Brandon Capital, through Brandon BioCatalyst, and will support the company through its pre-clinical development and into clinical trials. Ankere, which has operations in both… Read more »
Melbourne-based biotech company Tessara Therapeutics has developed microscopic 3D models of healthy and diseased brain tissues that can be used by researchers to study and discover better, more effective drugs to treat neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and epilepsy. The ground-breaking technology has been called RealBrain, developed by a team of neuroscientists and biomaterials experts. Because… Read more »
Biotech scale-up Microbio is looking to raise capital following positive domestic pilot study results for its bloodstream infection (BSI) test ahead of taking it to market The Brisbane-based venture’s InfectID-BSI test has the potential for significant improvement in detecting bloodstream infection and sepsis, the world’s mostly deadly infection, with 11 million deaths annually. InfectID-BSI is an in… Read more »
The University of NSW entrepreneurship program, UNSW Founders, will launch a new venture-backed accelerator for deep tech startups focused on synthetic biology and biotech with support from the CSIRO’s VC arm, Main Sequence. SynBio 10x will run in conjunction with the RNA Institute and UNSW School of Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences. Main Sequence will invest $120,000… Read more »
Biotech startup EnGeneIC, has raised $5 million on the VentureCrowd platform in a pre-IPO round, ahead of plans for a NASDAQ listing in Q2 2022. News of positive results for Covid-19 nanocellular vaccine pre-clinical animal studies, saw that figure jump five-fold. The startup has develop proprietary nanocell technology, which they’ve called EDV, which is predominantly… Read more »
Expressions of interest are now open for the first cohort for CUREator, Australia’s first national biotech incubator. CUREator was established with $40 million in funding from the federal government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and the incubator, run by the Brandon Capital-managed Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF), hopes to play a hand in developing up… Read more »
Decarbonisation startup Loam Bio, which uses microbes microbes to sequester carbon in farm soils, has raised $40 million in a series A. The round is led by Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures. Other investors include Main Sequence Ventures, Horizons Ventures, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Acre Venture Partners, Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and Fiona… Read more »
A national biotech incubator is being set up in an Australia first following a $40 million grant from the federal government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) The incubator will be run by the Brandon Capital-managed Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF), which received the grant as part of $79 million in MRFF commercialisation grants to four… Read more »
A biotech startup focused on treating cancer has raised $5.4 million, led by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation. Adelaide-based Carina Biotech will use the cash injection to develop its “CAR-T” cell therapies to treat cancers such as colorectal cancer, which is the deadliest cancer for 25-34-year-old Australians. Carina’s founding shareholders, board and management also… Read more »
The NSW government’s health department has turned once again to deep tech incubator Cicada Innovations to deliver a free training program to help aspiring biotech and medtech entrepreneurs and academics commercialise their ideas. The NSW Health Commercialisation Training Program aims to fast-track innovative ideas that will revolutionise the healthcare sector, improve patient outcomes, and provide… Read more »
Australian biotech venture Microbio announced this week that it has developed a new type of COVID-19 test with the potential to both determine if someone has the virus and also indicate whether they are infectious. The Brisbane-based startup says its InfectID-COVID-19-R test has been independently validated to identify the presence of the virus when still… Read more »
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Australia’s first ever incubator, Cicada Innovations. To date, Cicada Innovations has incubated more than 100 startups, and helped more than 300 companies raise in excess of $450 million in venture capital and government grants, create hundreds of jobs, build local manufacturing capability, file more than 500 patents and… Read more »
9 Victorian startups are being mentored to reach unicorn status
Founders depart fintech Timelio as it raises $7.5 million
ASX-listed iSelect throws in the towel, selling to rival in takeover priced at a 15% of its IPO market cap
Subscription produce startup Good & Fugly raises $530,000 via crowdfunding
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