Traditional rivals Monash and Melbourne Universities are collaborating to create a new company that will market and sell medicines developed by the institutions to pharmaceutical companies, reinvesting any profit into research.
Both universities are putting A$22.5 million towards the venture and the Victorian State Government is kicking in an additional A$10 million to get the business off the ground. The company will eventually register as a charity and search for further philanthropic funding to develop medicines to treat everything from cancers to immune disorders.
The enterprise, unofficially named M2 Venture Catalyst, will be independently managed by a board and will bring together research and commercialisation skills to better market discoveries from the more than 8,000 researchers who work at both institutions.
The venture hopes to address one of the biggest challenges facing researchers, getting the due diligence and trials needed to impress big pharmaceutical companies into investing, says Doron Ben-Meir, executive director of research, innovation and commercialisation at the University of Melbourne.
“It’s a high risk activity, it’s very hard to make money. Investors wait until they have an established team and a clear proposition, some good evidence and data for a commercialisation pathway.”
There aren’t enough people in Australia with the experience of taking drug candidates and turning them into viable investments, he says.
“ We have a mismatch in terms of the volume of research outputs we generate and the number of people with the skills and experience to effectively translate those outputs into investment opportunities.”
The intellectual property developed by M2 Venture Catalyst will be available to be licensed to pharmaceutical companies or bought outright. There will also be opportunities for spin-off companies from the venture.
The collaboration is in line with the Coalition’s National Innovation and Science Agenda, although Ben-Meir says it wasn’t created with this in mind.
Although there is potential risk of Australian research and intellectual property being owned by overseas companies, he says the benefits to Australia will be in the development process which will generate more jobs locally.
“A lot more is happening, other than the ultimate ownership of the IP because we’re building an industry that systematically generates the IP, that activity itself generates jobs, it generates further wealth and medical outcomes in Australia.”
He says the venture expected to become a sustainable business within 10 years.
When asked why now for the collaboration between two of the biggest and competitive universities in Australia, Ben-Meir says it makes common sense.
“We’re getting into commercialising in a global marketplace and at that level it is so much more sensible to join forces to compete rather than compete with each other.”