QBF chief named

The Queensland government has chosen a bioscientist with extensive overseas big pharma and commercial experience to head its $100 million life science venture capital fund.

As chief executive officer of the Queensland Biocapital Fund (QBF), Dr Kathryn Radford will oversee the selection and financing of about 20 start-ups over the next few years.

She comes to the job with a PhD in bioengineering and 20 years of experience in the international pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.

Her overseas roles included stints at GlaxoWellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) in Switzerland and director of bioengineering with Canadian biotech start-up BioSignal Discovery.

More recently she has been director of the pharmaceutical division at listed Sydney biosensor company Ambri and senior business development manager with materials science company Polymerat.

QBF is likely to invest between $2 million and $12 million in each of the companies it decides to back over the next four years.

Many of those deals are likely to be aimed at local opportunities spawned by Queensland's own biocluster of university and research institutes and Radford, who earned her bioengineering PhD at the University of Queensland, has impeccable local credentials.

On the commercial side, her career has straddled both the small biotech and big pharma side of the street, giving her a dual perspective that will be valuable in the new job.

As important for QBF is her business development background in creating alliances for funding, development and joint venture agreements with multinational pharmaceutical, diagnostic, biotechnology and bioinstrumentation companies.

But the selection of a chief executive whose paramount expertise is scientific not financial emphasises the QBF board's belief that the head of a bioscience fund needs a deep understanding of the technology.

Radford officially moves into her QBF role on December 2 and will complete the assemblage of a five to eight person team over the next few months. The fund is now accepting applications with the assessment process due to start in January.

"We will predominantly be supporting Queensland bio-ventures but we are very flexible in regards to where companies are based and we will definitely be considering other [non-Queensland] bio-ventures that fit our criteria," said Radford.

QBF will also be tapping the contacts and expertise of the Queensland Investment Corporation, a State government body that is one of Australia's largest wholesale funds managers.

A closed-end fund, QBF will target a 20 per cent rate of return over its 10-year life span.

QBF chairman Trevor Rowe said the ability to attract a CEO of Radford's calibre testified to the potential of the fund.