Heavyweight board a coup for start-up Farmacule

Queensland molecular farming start-up Farmacule Bioindustries has scored a mini-coup by appointing ex-Dow Chemical heavyweight Dr Paul Zorner to its board.

One result for Farmacule will be instant access to a large network of US expertise in commercialising bioresearch. It is a manoeuvre other young Australian biotechs wrestling with the commercialisation skills gap might do well to emulate.

Zorner was chief scientist for biotechnology and bioprocessing in Dow's corporate R&D area. He also served on Dow's life sciences equity investment committee and has been involved with a number of biotech companies at the boardroom and advisory level since leaving Dow two years ago.

Farmacule believes the San Diego-based Zorner's contacts in the US bioindustry should prove invaluable to the company, which could well be headed for public listing this year.

The company, a spin-off from the Queensland University of Technology, has intellectual property related to the localised expression of specific proteins in plants.

It sees an opportunity to establish a molecular farming industry in Australia focused on contract production of high-value proteins and other compounds, such as new plastics, using plants as the production vehicle.

Also on Farmacule's board is Greg Baynton, founder of seed funding and venture capital intermediary Orbit Capital.

Baynton contends the biotech area has a surfeit of commercially attractive ideas and the venture capital to fund them. He says the real shortfall lies is in the commercial expertise needed to successfully manage ventures through the cycle from research to product launch.

The problem is generic to Australia but particularly noticeable in Queensland, where both Farmacule and Orbit are based. Queensland historically has suffered a brain drain of commercialisation skills to southern states and overseas, says Baynton.

Australia as a whole needs to find ways of reducing or reversing that flow, he claims.

One method is to lure back Australians who have spent years working in the US industry, as blood clot testing company Agenix Ltd did recently by snaring Don Home as its CEO.

Another way is to acquire the expertise via board appointments, as Farmacule has done.

Through Zorner, says Baynton, Farmacule has acquired "a whole network of commercialisation experts."