Bionomics goes for aggressive strategy in 2005

Australian biotech, Bionomics gave an investor presentation in Melbourne on 2 February 2005 and outlined a bolder, more aggressive strategy. There are many Australian biotech companies with big aspirations.

Q. corporatefile.com.au - What do you believe are the key factors which differentiate Bionomics from other small cap biotech companies and what will trigger your success?

A. Bionomics MD & CEO Deborah Rathjen - In aspiring to build a company valued at $200 million in three years’ time, we have deliberately set ourselves an ambitious target, but it is an appropriate one for us given our accelerated development strategy, our ability to leverage our bases in the US and Europe to access international markets, our key elements for success and the assets we’ll be developing over the coming three years.

There will be three key elements to our success: our strong intellectual property (IP) base, our scientific strength in our core areas of central nervous system (CNS) disorders and cancer where we have competitive advantages, and our people who have proven experience in developing a small cap biotech company into a large cap company.

In relation to our strong IP and proprietary technology base, we hold patents and patent applications relating to over 600 genes and specific therapeutic and diagnostic applications. We aim to leverage our expertise and IP to generate both near term and longer term revenues.

Our R&D focuses on the discovery and development of therapeutics for serious conditions such as epilepsy, anxiety and breast cancer. We have two proprietary discovery platforms: ionXR, used to identify genetic targets for the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy, and AngeneTM, used to identify cancer drug prospects based on angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels).

On people, we have a highly-regarded scientific team, a management team with extensive commercial experience in biotech and pharmaceutical companies, a well-credentialed board comprising some of the leading biotech people from the US as non-executive directors, and a very active scientific advisory board which includes Dr Errol DeSouza and Dr Timothy Harris who have proven experience in building shareholder value.