Bio and business bridge to success
Russian-born Dr Raisa Monteiro is not only a rising biotechnology star, she’s also building bridges that link science and business.
Research Director at Brisbane company DendriMed, Dr Monteiro is the 2008 winner of the Advancing BioBusiness Award. Her prize, a trip to San Diego to attend BIO 2008, the world’s largest biotech industry gathering, is a prime opportunity to build international relationships with industry leaders. The BIO convention is part of the crucial next step in marketing DendriMed’s product: a drug delivery system that targets cancerous cells while leaving healthy tissue untouched.
“Successfully commercialising Australian technologies is not just about the merit of your science, but also knowing the right people,” Dr Monteiro said.
A Stanford University-educated polymer chemist, Dr Monteiro has a talent for making complex science accessible. Witness her evocative description of DendriMed’s drug delivery technology: ‘picture microscopic space shuttles that are programmed to deliver their drug payloads directly to cancer affected tissue and organs without harming healthy cells.’
It’s a clever word-picture she conjures, and one that certainly aids understanding. What it belies though is the years of hard toil and hard science that lie behind the end product, one that will enable targeted, high-dose cancer drugs to do their work with little or no side-effects for patients.
“Winning this prestigious award is a huge accolade for me personally, but importantly it will also help raise the profile of our company which is just starting out,” said Dr Monteiro said.
DendriMed aims to commercialise the technology created by Raisa Monterio’s husband, Associate Professor Michael Monteiro, and his team at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at The University of Queensland.
Although it is early days for DendriMed, the company already has a competitive edge. “One of our strengths is that we are a truly interdisciplinary company. That’s important because it’s now recognised that the real breakthroughs occur at the interface of different areas of science.”
The big break for DendriMed came with the development of the nano-biotechnology that enables better delivery of drugs. “What makes our product different and better than other drug delivery systems is our polymer technology developed at UQ, which is brand new,” Dr Monteiro said.
The way the particles are put together makes all the difference. As Dr Monteiro describes it, “a spherical particle made up of wedges which we pre-make is assembled like lego blocks; we can place several drugs in one unit so it provides a form of combination therapy.”
“After years of ARC grant-sponsored work we’ve now got the platform, the technology to assemble the particles with greater functionality. The next step is to identify a commercial partner who has the problem that we can solve – needing to deliver drugs into the body for specific indications.”
With over 22,000 delegates expected from around the world, Dr Monteiro said attending BIO 2008 will be “like taking a crash course in biotech leadership.”
Equally valuable will be two weeks of meetings with biotechnology industry leaders that the Biobusiness Award organisers have lined up for Dr Raisa following the conference. Let’s hope that for DendriMed’s sake it’s also the start of a successful international bridging of bio and business.
www.dendrimed.com (non-government site)
Story: Antoinette Bauer
Last reviewed 17 July 2008
