23 June 2011

Seven potential cancer therapies are among 50 innovations UniQuest will be marketing in Washington DC at this month's BIO Convention, the largest annual biotechnology event in the world.

Uniquest will also market six medical devices, five autoimmune diseases therapies, four drug delivery platforms, three diabetes treatments and two neuropathic pain targets among their portfolio of innovations.

BIO 2011 will run from June 27-30, with more than 15,000 industry leaders from 65 countries expected to attend.

“We will be talking to a wide range of representatives from major international biotech and pharmaceutical companies about licensing university-based technologies and about working with our researchers to find cures and better health management strategies,” the UniQuest Managing Director, David Henderson, said.

“UQ innovations are now generating annual sales of more than three billion dollars globally, from vaccines like Gardasil tohigh-tech MRI machines and telehealth systems.

“BIO is a key meeting place not only for all kinds of industries involved with life sciences but also for venture capital and private equity firms looking to invest in ground-breaking technologies. It’s one of the most important events we attend every year.”

Between meetings the UniQuest team will operate booth #2537 in the Australia Pavilion, where the innovation portfolio will be showcased on a flat screen and in the latest edition of UniQuest’s technology newsletter, The Deal Sheet. Visitors to the booth will be offered a souvenir novelty flash drive loaded up with summaries of a range of university research projects.

UniQuest has helped to launch several Australian life sciences innovations onto the global market since 1984:

• UniQuest was involved with the early commercialisation of the HPV technology discovered by Dr Ian Frazer and his late research partner Dr Jian Zhou, which has contributed to the development of a vaccine for cervical cancer. Pharmaceutical company Merck has distributed 65 million doses of Gardasil® since the vaccine’s global launch in 2006. It is now approved in 123 countries.

• UniQuest bio-pharmaceutical start-up QRxPharma Limited listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in May 2007 and made history as Australia’s biggest biotechnology float. QRxPharma recently announced its successful completion of Phase 3 trials of its patented pain management product.

• Another UniQuest start-up, ImpediMed Ltd, closed oversubscribed when it listed on the ASX and as a publicly-listed company in September 2007. It recently became the first company to offer FDA, CE and TGA cleared L-Dex devices for simple point of care, standardised and objective metrics to aid in the clinical assessment of lymphoedema.

• Spinifex Pharmaceuticals Pty Limited attracted 10.5 million dollars last year in an expanded “Tranche 2” Series B capital raising for developing its neuropathic pain therapies. UniQuest established Spinifex in 2005 with a pre-seed investment from Uniseed.

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Media enquiries: Leanne Wyvill +61 7 3365 4037, 0409 767 199 or l.wyvill@uniquest.com.au

About UniQuest
Established by The University of Queensland in 1984, UniQuest is widely recognised as one of Australia’s largest and most successful university commercialisation groups, benchmarking in the top tier of technology transfer worldwide. From an intellectual property portfolio of 1,500+ patents it has created over 60 companies, and since 2000 UniQuest and its start-ups have raised more than million to take university technologies to market. Annual sales of products using UQ technology and licensed by UniQuest are running at 400 billion dollars. UniQuest now commercialises innovations developed at The University of Queensland and its commercialisation partner institutions: the University of Wollongong, University of Technology Sydney, James Cook University, University of Tasmania, Mater Medical Research Institute, and Queensland Health. UniQuest also provides access to an expansive and exclusive network of independent academics to tailor a consulting or project R&D solution to meet the diverse needs of industry and government, facilitating some 500 consulting, expert opinion, testing, and contract research services each year. UniQuest is also a leading Australasian provider of international development assistance recognised for excellence in technical leadership, management and research. Working with agencies such as AusAID, NZAID, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, UniQuest has developed and implemented more than 400 projects in 46 countries throughout the Pacific, South-East Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Africa. For more information about UniQuest, please visit www.uniquest.com.au.