Brandon Capital

Registrations are open for the Medicinal Chemistry and Biology Conference, where academia and industry come together to cover: 🔴Methods for hit and target identification 🟢Development of new biologically active entities 🔵Probing complex biology 🟠New approaches to tackling diseases. 📍 Darwin 📅13 to 16 April 2025 👇🏽Explore further and register Brad Sleebs

Professor Peter Currie from CUREator pre-clinical top-up funding awardee Myostellar shares what he’s learned creating MyoStellar, a biotech startup focused on developing therapies for people living with dystrophies and myopathies. 💪 Why is MyoStellar Focused on Muscle Restoration? Muscles, as the largest organ in the body, surprisingly lack treatments that can restore lost muscle in any therapeutic setting. Muscle diseases, such as dystrophies and myopathies, can be particularly debilitating and, in many cases, inevitably fatal. 📚 What Have You Learned on MyoStellar's Journey? Starting MyoStellar has been an incredible learning experience. While we still have a long way to go, I’m immensely proud of what our team has achieved. Creating a startup is an exciting endeavour, but it requires you to do many things you’ve never done before, so it takes hard work and resilience. I've also had to learn a whole new vocabulary along the way! 🔬 Keys to Success Solid science is our ticket to play, but it’s equally important to remain open to learning new skills and becoming an exceptional communicator. The ability to share our vision with a diverse range of potential investors and advisers is essential, building trust and creating alignment to ensure everyone is working towards the same goals. 🛤️ Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs For researchers considering spinning out a company, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of finding someone who’s been on the journey before. I was fortunate to find this person within my institution and am incredibly grateful to Monash University Innovations, especially Dr Bo Yun and Dr Alison Greenway, for their invaluable guidance. Asking questions, no matter how simple, and listening attentively are crucial to success—it truly feels like being a Ph.D. student all over again Mikaël Martino #cureator #innovation #biotech

🚀 Congratulations to the Certa Therapeutics team on their latest milestone, with the World Health Organization granting their lead candidate, FT011, the International Non-Proprietary Name (INN) of ‘asengeprast’. Asengeprast, a first-in-class GPR68 antagonist, is showing great promise in treating chronic fibrosis across multiple organs. Certa’s deep understanding of GPR68—a previously undrugged receptor recognised as a master switch in fibrosis—is unlocking new therapeutic possibilities. Early clinical data in systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients demonstrates asengeprast's potential and follows Orphan Drug status in the EU and US and FDA Fast Track Designation. Well done to the team Darren Kelly Ann Hamer Michelle Bradney PhD, GAICD Michelle Papadimitriou Simona Carbone, PhD #Fibrosis #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials #Biotech #Innovation

🚀Here's GILZRx Founder Associate Professor Sarah Jones sharing what she's learned on her journey to develop a therapy that could outperform #corticosteroids for treating conditions like #lupus and #rheumatoidarthritis.   💊 Why did you choose inflammation and corticosteroids? I've been interested in inflammation since I was 16 (I even have a newspaper interview from back then to prove it!). Now, I fully understand how badly a safe alternative to steroids is needed. I'm both the most critical sceptic and the loudest proponent of this research. I hope we can get there soon.   💡 What did you do with the first round of funding? GILZRx used its initial #CUREator grant to tackle some key “what if” questions:   • Could our approach develop something better than a steroid? • If we could, is our approach safe? • Is it free from steroid-like side effects?   Finding answers to these questions gave us the confidence to ask, "Would it work?" Excitingly, the answer was that it has the potential to work well at lower doses.   🚀 What are your plans for the second round of funding? The CUREator top-up funding round brings us to the point of “Okay, let’s do this!” We’re ready to build the proprietary drug-hunting experiments that form our medicine discovery program.   🔍 What did you learn about yourselves since you started GILZRx? We learned that we loved...   We love leveraging our academic rigour to progress our understanding of “Could this work?”   We love the clarity that clear and transparent commercially focused decision-making processes provide.   We love moving at a fast pace and making meaningful, rapid progress.   📢 What advice would you have for researchers interested in spinning out a company? Spinning out a company is a powerful move at the right time, and there's no one-size-fits-all approach.   My advice is to seek advice far and wide and deep. The more opinions and experiences you hear about commercialising research, the more informed you'll be about steering your ship well. Congratulations to the entire GILZRx team, and we look forward to seeing what you achieve next! CC Aoife Cullen Michael Vovos Loretta Wylde

🎤 Today, we have the pleasure of featuring Dr Kieran Mulroney, CEO and founder of Cytophenix (CUREator Health Security Stream) and his team.   🚀 The Cytophenix Mission: We spun out of The University of Western Australia in 2023 with a clear mission—to help doctors get the right antibiotic to the right patient faster while preserving the most potent antibiotics for future use. Our diagnostic test improves individual patient outcomes and supports global antimicrobial stewardship, an increasingly urgent need in the face of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).   💡 What Inspired Cytophenix: Our tech came from academic insights, where we saw the potential to drastically improve clinical decision-making by speeding up the process of getting doctors the information they need. With AMR making treatment decisions harder, getting the right test results faster is essential.   🎯 Why We Applied For CUREator: Our technology was at a critical stage of development. We needed to refine our Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, automate analysis, and test an end-to-end prototype. The CUREator program came at just the right time, helping us field-test our product, develop regulatory strategies, and set the foundation for market entry.   📈 How We've Grown: The CUREator program helped us spin out of UWA and really accelerate our commercialisation efforts. With follow-on funding and further support from programs like CSIRO ON, we’re preparing for regulatory approval and engaging investors as we move toward our next big milestones.   💬 Advice for Biotech Startups: Joining an incubator like CUREator is just the start. Keep testing your ideas, talking to stakeholders, and evolving as you go. And remember—it takes a village to build something meaningful.   Congratulations to the talented Cytophenix team! Christine Carson Sherief Khorshid Teagan Paton Nick Thomson #CUREator #HealthSecurity #Biotech #Innovation #AntimicrobialResistance #Healthcare #Startups #Cytophenix #PatientCare

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Congratulations to Alkira Bio #GILRZx Myostellar and Cytophenix, who have been awarded CUREator Top Up Funding through the Pre-clinical and Health Security streams. Top-up funding rounds are supplemented with monies from projects with unmet milestones and awarded to those who have shown substantial progress via a competitive process. The additional funding recognises each recipient’s significant progress in developing their innovations and their potential to deliver community health benefits and will further accelerate their development, recognising. 🚀We're looking forward to sharing more about the people who've created these incredible companies in the coming days, so stay tuned! Funding for the Pre-clinical stream is available thanks to funding from the was provided by the #medicalresearchfuturefund cc Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care #biotech #innovation #healthcare #research #CUREator #lifesciences #australia

Last week, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources team joined us in Brandon's Melbourne office to shoot a video about the BioMedical Translation Fund (BTF). Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of Aravax CEO Pascal Hickey and Brandon Capital Partner Chris Smith sharing stories about peanut allergies, Aravax and clinical-stage investing, which we're looking forward to sharing soon. Thanks to Rafael Villadiego, Amelia Varaei Jamahl El Ayadi, and Laurence Thomas for thinking of us and producing on the day! #innovation #biotech #behindthescenes

Congratulations to Christophe Demaison and the incredible ENA Respiratory team, who will expand their Phase Ib study to younger adults thanks to a contract extension from the US Department of Defence. Results from the study are expected in the Q4 2024. #ClinicalTrial #DrugDevelopment #Immunomodulator #RespiratoryDisease

Excellent panel discussion from the Australian Investment Council conference that included our CEO Dr Chris Nave Securing access to larger pools of capital for Australian biotechs so they can implement their global development plans from Australia was a key theme.

🚀 Congratulations to the George Medicines team, who presented at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting in London this week. Having recently filed a US FDA New Drug Application, the team is making significant strides in their mission to combat widespread cardiometabolic disorders like hypertension and diabetes. 💊GMRx2 is an innovative triplet therapy that combines telmisartan, amlodipine, and indapamide in ultra-low, low, and standard-dose formats. 🌍Positive results in a global phase 3 study met all primary safety and efficacy outcomes. 🌟Standard dose achieved a 74% clinical blood pressure control rate, outperforming dual therapy combinations. Based on research originating from Brandon BioCatalyst member The George Institute for Global Health , we’re proud to be supporting a potentially groundbreaking solution for millions of people struggling with suboptimal blood pressure management. Fierce Biotech story in the comments 👇🏼 #BrandonCapital #GeorgeMedicines #Hypertension #CardiometabolicHealth #InnovationInMedicine #BiotechInvesting