CAREER SPECIAL: Risk and reward

Graeme O'Neill reports on the hiring challenges faced by small-to-medium Australian biotechs

Who wants to be a biomillionaire? Scientist-entrepreneurs are playing a vital role in the proliferation and growth of small companies in the Australian biotechnology industry.

The risks are large, the future uncertain, and the most promising discoveries can fall over anywhere on the obstacle course between research bench and market - a market that shifts constantly with the economic and political winds.

A start-up company can have a strong IP portfolio, yet still languish in the marketplace because too few potential investors in Australia understand it, or are prepared to take a punt.

Finding good research staff is another challenge - in the early phases of their development, few biotechnology companies in Australia can offer job security, or high salaries.

What they can offer is an intellectual challenge, and equity - and with it, the possibility of wealth beyond the dreams of most career scientists in public research institutions. The variables in the risk-benefit equation are different values, but they balance out.

Adelaide-based BresaGen has been in the field longer than most, and is familiar with such difficulties. Its main research programs are in stem cell therapy, using human embryonic stem cells, and in protein therapeutics.

The use of embryonic stem cells in research is a politically combustible issue, but in June, BresaGen's lines met the Bush Administration's criteria for federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cells, securing the company a $1.3 million grant from the US National Institutes of Health.

But the company's protein therapeutics program suffered a setback when its E21R GM-CSF antagonist failed to confirm its early clinical promise, forcing the termination of a collaboration with British Biotechnology. The resulting $2.85 million loss forced BresaGen to lay off nine staff, and freeze hiring.

"It's just the nature of research and development," says BresaGen's chief financial officer, Linton Burns. "Our prospects for next year are good -- our stem cell therapies are meeting all milestones and progressing very well.

"Our cell therapy program in Australia is getting on for three years old. Looking back, when we tried to recruit researchers, we needed some specific skills. We started from scratch, and we had to cast our net wide to find them.

"We ended up hiring most of our new staff overseas, from the US, Russia and eastern Europe, but we also brought a couple of expatriates home. We've got some key researchers, from fields that are in high demand."

Burns says hiring is based around equity packages for new research staff - it's essential for attracting specialists.

"The prospects for a company like ours go up and down with the technology, and with the markets," he says. "Our research staff are our biggest asset, because our intellectual property is invented by individuals. Their talents are the key to our success."

Dr Greg Coia, research and development manager with Melbourne-based Evogenix, says the company has recently advertised for several new staff. Evogenix has developed a molecular toolkit for producing novel proteins with potential therapeutic activity, by randomly mutating the RNA instructions for their synthesis.

"Many people have some experience in protein chemistry or molecular genetics, but not a lot of people with experience in both," Coia says. "The work is demanding, so we train them on the job. We started out with lots of people with expertise in protein chemistry, and some of them went into molecular genetics; we've come full circle, because we're now teaching younger molecular geneticists about protein chemistry.

"It's difficult to cover everything, because it requires such a broad range of knowledge. Any commercial experience, or knowledge of the IT industry, is an added bonus. We're going to be dealing with commercial companies, and we have to understand how they work."