Opara: biotech market needs education

Dr Richard Opara -- a substantial shareholder in biotech companies Polartechnics (ASX:PLT) and Avantogen (ASX:ACU) -- is trying to raise money for a new start-up capital biotech fund, but is finding the going tough in Australia and may have to go overseas to find the cash.

While Opara believes that research in Australia is exceptional and that there is great potential in biotechnology companies here, he is having trouble convincing potential Australian investors, particularly institutions, to put money into projects which are essentially speculative.

"I think the market in general is not very well educated in the long-term value of biotechnology projects," Opara said. "We really have to work on this and educate people."

He said the structure for his Chopin Fund (named for his Polish origins) was already in place, but eventually he may have to go offshore to the US to raise cash for Australian technology.

"Quite frankly, I'm not confident that I can succeed in Australia. But I will try my hardest to do it," he said. "There's not much point in raising less than US$100 million. My ambitious target is $1 billion."

Opara recently made a failed bid to reinstate himself as a director of Polartechnics over what he saw as the company's lack of commercial focus. He said he was not convinced that academic researchers were the best people to lead public companies or take products to commercialisation. "Unfortunately, we don't have the skill to make it work financially," he said.

Equating the biotechnology industry with the film industry, Opara said: "The dilemma is quite simple, if you really want to make money out of movies, you have to go to Hollywood."

He pointed out that the Australian market was generally small, making it hard for biotech companies to achieve commercial success here. But raising the money overseas will have a negative impact on Australia, said Opara. "Eventually the American investors will say: 'Why don't you invest in America? We've got it all as well'," he said.

Australia is very good at developing products to a certain stage, and then doing nothing because of lack of money, said Opara. "There is nothing more common in this world than genius without money," said Opara.

"I see this as an opportunity for Australia. I think Australian biotech is very much underfunded."