Cell therapy technology company OrthoCell Pty Ltd has built a $1.2 million laboratory facility at its Murdoch University base to service both its own research needs and those of other biotherapeutic companies in Western Australia.
Cell therapy technology company OrthoCell Pty Ltd has built a $1.2 million laboratory facility at its Murdoch University base to service both its own research needs and those of other biotherapeutic companies in Western Australia.
The company, which last year licensed tendon tissue regeneration technology from the University of Western Australia, opened its new clean room facility last week.
The new facility includes a labora-tory for OrthoCell’s own research and a second room for external users.
Local venture capital fund Murdoch Westscheme Enterprise Partnership – a subsidiary of superannuation fund Westscheme, managed by Perth-based venture capital group Stone Ridge Ventures – contributed about half of the project’s seed funding, with the state and federal governments providing the remaining capital through grants.
OrthoCell managing director Paul Anderson said the company had little option but to build its own clean room for research and development, with the only real alternative being to relocate early clinical trials to the east coast.
He said there was also an opportunity to service other WA-based biotechnology companies, given the local bottleneck of similar cell therapy projects and the lack of a suitable facility, and said Perth’s location in the same time zone as South-East Asia was a further advantage.
“Currently in WA there is a lack of clean room environments for researchers and companies to commercialise their biotherapeutic technologies,” Mr Anderson said.
“We saw a need to provide a clean room for common user access. It was also a way for us to create early revenues.”
The facility would strengthen WA’s reputation as a specialist precinct in cell therapy development, he said, joining Victoria, which was known for its stem cell research, and Queensland, which had a strong scientific base in small molecule research.
OrthoCell will provide both hard and soft infrastructure to external users, including quality control mechanisms, and will offer its expertise to companies on a fee basis.
Mr Anderson said the company was already in discussions with local players to provide infrastructure and was moving towards a lease agreement with a single party.
The clean room facility will assist with the development and commercialisation of OrthoCell’s tendon therapies, used to aid the clinical progression of shoulder and ankle tendon injuries, with a clinical trial at the end of the year.
Mr Anderson said the phase one safety trial would most likely be a multi-centre trial in Perth and Melbourne.
He said early clinical trials would be undertaken in late 2008 and were likely to include centres in Hong Kong, Singapore and China, to capitalise on OrthoCell’s scientific networks in the region.
“The intention is to involve the South-East Asian region in the export of technologies,” Mr Anderson said.
The company has previously exported its product to centres in the region.