Cytiva BioChallenge fuels biotech development in ANZ

Cytiva, a global life sciences company, has announced the winner of its first BioChallenge for the Australia and New Zealand region (ANZ).

Since the global BioChallenge was launched in 2018, Cytiva has overseen more than 130 projects, providing approximately $5.6 million of products and services to support research, bioprocessing development and commercialisation. In the first ANZ BioChallenge, the focus was on empowering biotech researchers and companies in three areas: cell engineering, process development and isolation as well as chromatography and filtration purification. The competition attracted 32 proposals from academic institutions and start-up companies across the region’s biotechnology industry, to be evaluated by a panel of independent judges.

VivaZome Therapeutics, an emerging exosome-derived therapies developer, was ultimately awarded the top prize valued at approximately $200,000. VivaZome’s winning entry depicted the company’s efforts to develop a universal exosome manufacturing process, with an aim to produce off-the-shelf regenerative medicines without existing hurdles of delivering live cells to patients.

As part of the award, Cytiva will provide VivaZome and the other award-winning companies with its Fast Trak Services and training worth over $360,000 throughout 2022. Cytiva will also seek to nurture and further develop early-stage innovations through joint efforts.

Professor David Haylock, CEO of VivaZome Therapeutics, said, “Our team is working to be a global leader in providing novel, valuable and safe exosome-derived therapies for devastating and life-threatening diseases. To make our vision real, we value the opportunity provided by BioChallenge to download industry experience and know-how from Cytiva.”

In 2021, Cytiva, along with Financial Times research arm Longitude, compiled a global index based on a survey of 1165 biopharma executives and healthcare policymakers across 20 countries. The index ranked the ability of the biopharma industry to respond to five major challenges, identifying talent pool and R&D collaboration as restraints to the ANZ biopharma industry to achieving self-sufficiency. Cytiva hopes to support the industry by turning challenges into opportunities.

Tim O’Meara, Project Leader for the ANZ BioChallenge at Cytiva, said, “Excellent research facilities, world-class capabilities and a strong but flexible regulatory regime have made ANZ a powerhouse of biotechnology. We hope BioChallenge can help discover and showcase promising industry researchers and companies with the support of Cytiva’s expertise, products and services.”

Jarrod Belcher, Director, Researcher Exchange and Development within Industry Initiative, MTP Connect, concluded, “The Cytiva BioChallenge provides funding and services and expertise to winning applicants to help grow local biomanufacturing in Australia. We appreciate industry support like this contributing to the commercialisation efforts of Australia’s world-class research.”

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