MELBOURNE, Australia—Wednesday, 11 September 2024—CUREator, Australia’s national biotech incubator managed by Brandon BioCatalyst, today announced that four companies will receive top-up funding across its Preclinical and Health Security streams.
Top-up funding rounds are supplemented with monies from projects with unmet milestones and awarded competitively to projects that have shown substantial progress. Innovations recognised in this round include a cloud-hosted testing platform that enables doctors to accurately and quickly prescribe antibiotics and new drugs to tackle schizophrenia and other Central Nervous System conditions.
The $1.865 million in additional funding will further accelerate their development, recognising each recipient’s significant progress in developing their innovations and their potential to deliver community health benefits.
Brandon BioCatalyst CEO Dr Chris Nave said, “It’s exciting to witness the rapid progression of companies that have emerged from the CUREator program. In a relatively short period, we’ve seen alum securing commercial partnerships and private capital, underscoring the federal government’s vision for translational research funding. This demonstrates the immense value that a program like CUREator brings to the Australian life sciences ecosystem, embedding itself firmly in our nation’s commercialisation infrastructure.”
The top-up funding, granted on a competitive basis by the CUREator Investment Review Committee, is a testament to the substantial progress and well-articulated plans demonstrated by the awardees.
Alkira Bio (previously LASEREDD Therapeutics), Myostellar, and GILZRx will receive $1.365 m from the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund’s Early-Stage Translation and Commercialisation Support (ESTAC) grant, in addition to the $1.5 million they collectively received in the first funding round.
Cytophenix will receive $500,000 through CUREator’s Health Security stream, in addition to the $500,000 it received in the first round of funding, to further develop its rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing platform.
“Our AI-powered, cloud-hosted platform FloCAST is designed to help physicians prescribe the correct antibiotics in hours rather than days, saving lives and helping to combat antimicrobial resistance globally,” said Dr. Kieran Mulroney, CEO of Cytophenix. “The top-up funding will allow us to accelerate our go-to-market strategy and further enhance our platform by screening an even broader range of bacteria.”
Alkira Bio, which is focused on using its LASEREDD® platform to discover therapeutic antibodies against challenging membrane protein targets, will receive $365,000 in addition to the $500,000 it received in the first round of funding.
Associate Professor Daniel Scott, Chief Executive Officer Alkira Bio: “Our initial CUREator grant was instrumental for establishing the company as a Florey Institute spin-out and generating assets in our schizophrenia program. We’ll use the top-up funding to advance these assets further and expand the platform’s potential into other CNS conditions. This is an exciting time for Alkira Bio, as we’ve also secured private funding to apply the LASEREDD® platform to high-value peripheral targets and indications.”
Since receiving the initial CUREator grant, Alkira Bio has made significant strides in drug development, leading to a commercial in-confidence partnership with a NASDAQ-listed company and securing a significant Seed investment from Curie Bio.
