PHASE3

Cancer vaccines are an area that anyone who is anyone is getting into, but it's a field  led largely by academics, not-for–profits, and specialist researchers. So this week we go back to basics - science that is. 

Australia may not have many cancer vaccine biotechs but – as we pointed out in episode one with the godfather of cancer vaccines, professor Dr Ian Frazer – it has heft in its research. 

Dr Seth Cheetham from the Univer...

In some ways, cancer vaccines are a history of hype and hope, over success. But that hasn't stopped people from trying. In 2024, biotech CEOs are hoping that this time, it's different.

Research houses are predicting significant market growth come 2030, mRNA vaccines are making it through to phase three clinical trials for the first time, and there are exciting new discoveries in technologies that have already be...

Cancer vaccines are a very niche section of cancer treatments. But two companies in Australia – the only two so far to go public with their work in this arena –are working on an even niche area within this. And one says their work is not a vaccine. The other does. 

So what gives? Well it depends on what you want to focus on: the deadly infectious nature of an oncolytic virus that bursts tumour cells from the inside, or the resulting...

Cancer vaccines started out as prevention. Think Gardasil for cervical and oral cancers caused by HPV, and the hepatitis B vaccine for liver cancer.

But today the science has moved on, to therapy vaccines. Vaccines that take immune cells and "rub their little noses in the antigen" - the substance that forces the body to sit up and take notice of a foreign invader or unusual activity.

Clinical trials abo...

Drone-deliveries of radioactive medicines and diagnostics to Australia's far-flung towns. Radiopharmaceuticals matched with genetic information to tailor precisely the right dose and isotope to a person's cancer. Pan-cancer drugs that fix many tumours, not just one. Miniature particle accelerators. 

These are the hopes, dreams and expectations we canvas in our last episode on radiopharmaceutical 'theranosti...

The rule of thumb in biotech is that it costs around $1 billion to bring a new therapy from lab to market. Protecting that investment is the patent system. But what if part of your product is not made by your contract manufacturer, but by the people who are giving it to patients? Ie, their doctors.

We explore an example in Australia where this push-pull when the years and money required to develop a groundbreaking new the...

Can Australia create a mine to lab to bedside production line for radiopharmaceutical medicine? It has the reactor, biotechs and the hospitals to do that last two, and even has a growing pool of expertise to run these. 

What it doesn't have, yet, is many advanced manufacturers to do the first bits, the critical parts such as sifting through old mine tailings for precursor materials and making nuclear isotopes for industry use, ...

The question we are dancing around in episode 3 of NUKED is whether locking down isotopes supply chains are really the only way to play the radiopharmaceutical game.

We ask Clarity Pharmaceutical executive chair Alan Taylor and Radiopharm Theranostics executive chair Paul Hopper how their companies are instead owning the IP, or banking a portfolio of IP licences, to create the kind of economic moat that others are pursuin...

In early 2023, one of the first two really big radiopharmaceutical drugs ran into a problem.  Novartis' prostate cancer therapy Pluvicto, released only the year before, was suddenly in short supply, snarling up just in time treatment schedules. 

In 2024 the supply chain problem is with the isotope Actinium 225, which *everyone* wants for clinical trials. RayzeBio has been a very famous victim, delaying a clinical trial because ...

The radiopharmaceuticals sector is on a knife point. The scope of what nuclear medicine can do is exploding. But the radioisotopes that biotechs need to make those therapies are in very, very short supply. Major clinical trials are hitting pause because of shortages of critical nuclear isotopes, and the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies are buying up biotechs that have locked in both the science and the supply chain. 

Th...

Wearable kidneys. Organs on a chip. Xenotransplantation. The future is here.

But is that the future people in biotech are truly looking to? Because the future that Certa Therapeutics CEO Darren Kelly is looking to is much less 1980s sci-fi and more... Apple watch.

And in a future where the numbers point to a rise in lifestyle diseases thanks to diet and a lack of exercise, climate change is an added risk that few ...

We may have led you on a bit in the first two episodes... kidney disease is still a big problem despite the massive shifts forward in treating it. There is a long way to go to bring medical sectors -- and governments -- along as well. 

This episode features Breonny Robson, general manager of clinical and research at Kidney Health Australia and Richard Lipscombe, managing director of Proteomics International.

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We speak to Dimerix CEO Dr Nina Webster about why investors are thrilled with her company, as it nears the midway point for its Phase III clinical trial for the rare disease focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS).

And we talk to PYC Therapeutics CEO Dr Rohan Hockings about how his company's tech actually works to treat polycystic kidney disease.  

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Produced by Rachel Williamson and Charis Palmer. Musi...

Kidney disease is a silent killer, with only 10% of all people knowing they have it before damage has been done. 

But in the last five years there's been a surge of work that's resulted in the FDA approving some blockbuster drugs in the last 18 months. Billion-dollar takeovers are now on the table and the tiny number of Australian biotechs in this sector have a front row seat to the action.  

This series explains ...

Life sciences more than anywhere else is the successful mashup of money and tech.  

I'm Rachel Williamson and this is Phase III, a weekly podcast diving deep into Australian life sciences. In each of our short series, we investigate, interrogate, and explore the most exciting companies and ideas in health science and the investment case for what they're doing. Join us as we explore the intersection between the br...