CUREator, the Brandon BioCatalyst biotech Incubator, today announced $1.23 million in top-up funding for six high-performing participants from their Preclinical and Minimising Antimicrobial Resistance Streams.
CUREator top-up funding was awarded through a competitive process by each stream's Investment Review Committee, based on the progress made with initial project funding and the strength of their proposed top-up plans.
From the Preclinical stream, $668,710 has been awarded to four pre-clinical companies thanks to funding from the Australian Federal Government's Medical Research Future Fund Early-Stage Translation and Commercialisation Support (ESTAC) grant.
These non-dilutive grants are in addition to the $2.5 million awarded to these biotechs in previous funding rounds.
Frontier Inflammasome Therapeutics (small molecule inhibitors for inflammatory lung and skin conditions), RAGE Biotech (inhaled RNA therapy for chronic lung disease), Cincera Therapeutics (novel drug treatments for fibrotic disease), and xCystence Bio (new class of treatments for polycystic kidney disease) are pioneering targeted therapies for people living with inflammatory and fibrotic conditions of the skin, kidneys and lungs.
xCystence Bio Project Lead Prof Ian Smyth, said: "Support from the CUREator program has been instrumental in enabling us to found xCystence Bio and in supporting the onward development of a new class of therapeutics to treat Polycystic Kidney Disease, a disease of significant unmet clinical need."
From the Minimising Antimicrobial Resistance Stream, $570,000 has been awarded to two projects thanks to funding from Australia's national science agency, the CSIRO. These non-dilutive grants are in addition to the $930,000 awarded to these biotechs in the first funding round.
CSIRO's Professor Branwen Morgan said: "We need to protect and preserve the power of our life-saving antibiotics. To achieve this it's important, we reduce the need for antibiotics – through infection prevention that includes appropriate vaccination – as well as by ensuring the right antibiotic for the right infection is used at the right time to optimise its effectiveness. CSIRO is delighted to support Spritz-OM and Clinical Branches on their research translation journey that ultimately will help mitigate the impact of antimicrobial resistance on society."
Awardees are Clinical Branches, a SaaS platform that helps clinicians make better antimicrobial prescribing decisions by integrating patient data with clinical pathways and Spritz-OM, a research program which is developing a nasal probiotic therapy to prevent childhood ear infections and reduce the (over)use of antibiotics.
Pharmacist turned software developer John Shanks, co-founder of Kraken Coding, said: 'The CSIRO funded CUREator grant enabled us to prove the demand for an accessible antimicrobial prescribing tool and we'll be using the top-up funding to build a mobile version to give guidance with context directly at the point of treatment, transforming emergency and rural care.'
CUREator's unique approach, that delivers funding in tranches based on milestone attainment, enables the redistribution of funds from projects with unmet milestones to supplement top-up funding rounds for high performers.
Dr Chris Nave, Brandon BioCatalyst Co-Founder and Managing Director, said: "CUREator's top-up funding model is designed to accelerate high-performing projects. By providing timely, targeted follow up funding, CUREator helps bridge the gap between early-stage innovation and investor-ready progress, ensuring promising biotechs can maintain momentum."
Australian research continues to demonstrate strong global therapeutic potential, and programs like CUREator, with its competitive Top-Up Funding mechanism that reallocates funds from projects not meeting milestones to those exceeding them, are becoming essential infrastructure for supporting biotechs with commercial promise in Australia.
