pSivida heralds 'image-raising' appointments

Platform technology company pSivida has made two new appointments to raise its international profile.

The company's new chairman Dr Roger Brimblecombe, a former chairman of SmithKline and French Research. He was also SmithKline's vice-president of collaborative R&D between 1988 and 1990.

Dr Roger Aston, previously CEO of Peptech and two UK biotechnology companies, is pSivida's new research and commercialisation director of the company, which focuses on biosilicon technology.

pSivida's Perth-based managing director, Gavin Rezos, said the new appointments were an endorsement of the company's direction and the board of three was a unique combination.

"Roger Aston and I are very much hands-on, doing a lot of the work, and Roger Brimblecombe has come on as a formal chairman and brings with him significant contact in the UK and US and the big pharmaceutical companies," Rezos said.

"My background is in international investment banking, Dr Aston's is in international biotechnology and commercialisation, and Dr Brimblecombe's is in international big pharma," he said. "You don't often see that combination in boards in Australia."

Both Brimblecombe and Aston have an historical involvement with pSivida. Brimblecombe previously served pSivida as a strategic advisor, and will remain chairman of the company's UK-based subsidiary, pSiMedica.

Aston was the non-executive chairman of pSivida and will remain CEO of pSiMedica.

In a statement, Brimblecombe said that through pSiMedica, pSivida hoped to accelerate development of the discovery that its nano-structured porous silicon, BioSilicon, was both biodegradable and biocompatible.

BioSilicon is a platform technology with potential applications in many aspects of healthcare including orthopaedics, gene delivery, tissue engineering and specialised drug delivery, according to pSivida.

Its inventor, Prof Leigh Canham, joined the company and pSivida has 12 existing patents with six more in development. The company claims to have no competitors in the 'bioterials' technology.

"The immediate focus is on novel methods of drug delivery, an area where there is a resurgence of interest as new types of drugs begin to emerge from the enormous amount of genomics and proteomics research currently being carried out," Brimblecombe said.

Rezos said that Aston would fast-track the development of BioSilicon technology through joint ventures and licence deals in Australia.

"It is international platform technology with collaboration in the UK and US, and we're working on collaborations in Asia and Australia," he said.

"Three collaborations with Australian eastern states based universities are to come into play this year, and two are in the area of nanotechnology that falls under the new Australian Research Council grants."

The company has been in operation for 13 months. After re-listing in May 2001, pSivida raised $2,460,000 from an oversubscribed placement of shares at 20 cents each. Its market capitalisation is $24 million, and its consolidated cash position is $7.7 million.