Continuity of Capital for Early Stage Therapeutics

We Believe

That Australian research is among the best in the world, Yet there is a market failure at the heart of Australian biotech market

Continuity of Capital

By investing in projects from inception through to pre-IPO, we intend to facilitate the continuity of capital from Australian academia to venture financing and through Australian capital markets.

Investment Mandate

Our investments are divided according to stage of development, where we intend to deploy:

We are solely focused on therapeutics, but are agnostic with regard to modality and indication.

Our People

Prof. Andrew F. Wilks
Managing Director

  • Serial entrepreneur: Founder, founding-CEO and CSO of Cytopia. Founder or co-founder of SYNthesis med chem (2007), Qubist Molecular Design (2009), Synkinase (2010), SYNthesis Research (2012), Catalyst Therapeutics (2012), Reagency (2014), Reverx (2015) and Anaxis Pharma (2017), inter alia.
  • Board member of numerous Australian biotechnology companies
  • Scientific advisory board of several Australian and overseas biotech companies
  • Adjunct/Honorary Professorship at Monash University. Enterprise Professor, Melbourne University (from March 2020); Fellow at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
  • Elected to ATSE – Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2007
  • Elected to AAHMS – Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2020
  • Awarded Australian Biobusiness Award (2007), Johnson and Johnson Ausbiotech Industry Leadership Award (2016), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Clunies-Ross Medal (2017) and the CSTI Lackmann Award (2021)
  • With the pending approval of Momelotinib* (acquired by GSK for $1.9B), Prof. Wilks stands to become the inventor of one of only a handful of Australian derived ethical drugs, including Relenza, Gardasil, and Xeglyze

Fabio Turatti, PhD
Managing Director

  • 20 years experience in pharma with extensive C-Suite experience
  • Research manager at AviPep
  • CSO at Sienna Cancer Diagnostics (now Inviq Diagnostics IIQ:ASX)
  • COO of SYNthesis Research since 2013, CEO since 2021
  • Extensive experience in licensing and partnering transactions, start-up funding, investment and capital models
  • Operational experience in all aspects of drug development and commercial management
  • BSc, Biotechnology (U. Wollongong), PhD in Immunology and Immunotherapy (Open University London, L’Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology)

Amir Zalcenstein, PhD
Managing Director

  • 17 years experience in healthcare
  • Multiple ASX ECM and VC transactions
  • VP BD at BiondVax (NASDAQ:BVXV)
  • CEO of two pharmaceutical startups, co founder of 3 start ups
  • Healthcare Investment analyst at Integra Holdings (Hebrew U VC)  and Healthcare investment manager at OneVentures
  • PhD in Molecular Biology (Weizmann Institute) and MBA (Technion).

Our Investments

We are closely partnered

with leading Australian research institutes, and are able to leverage the skills and resources of the SYNthesis Group in early stage drug development in order to reach value inflection points quickly and economically.

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