Manufacturing News

Start-up to test advanced manufacturing strategy

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This conspiracy theory is unlikely to be dismissed out of hand given what we know about the former government’s love of blatant pork-barrelling through car parks and community sporting facilities.

Vranes says Nutromics has already benefited from government support thanks to a $2 million grant under the federal government’s Co-operative Research Centres Projects grants and collaboration with the University of NSW.

This is a Cochlear-like opportunity. It’s a bona fide opportunity and we want it to stay here in Australia.

Peter Vranes, Nutromics CEO

Nutromics is developing a wearable diagnostic platform that uses DNA technology to enable tracking for multiple targets in the human body using a single patch.

The company claims it has the first technology of its kind that is both a platform and proven to work on the body.

The DNA sensor technology will provide clinicians and patients with continuous and real-time diagnostic information ranging from hard-to-dose drugs, like vancomycin, to biological markers for conditions such as kidney disease.

The inventor of the technology is Professor Kevin Plaxco, director of the Centre for Bioengineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Plaxco is a biological physicist who made the big breakthrough by asking the question: “How does the human body measure things continuously in real time?”

“It now seems mind-numbingly obvious, but at the time no one had asked that question. And the answer is that the body does it through these proteins that change shape in the presence of the target, but instead of using proteins he used DNA,” Vranes says.

Clinical trials

The clinical trials for its device are being held in partnership with Monash University.

Vranes says the development of the Nutromics technology platform had accelerated over the past two months to the point where the company’s prototype device is now going into human beings.

“We have a very clear timeline to manufacturing and FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] approval in the next few years,” he says.

“There’s not a perpetual false dawn situation here, which is something that has beset many biotech companies trying to cross the valley of death.”

Vranes and Mehta are now scouting for locations for a $60 million advanced manufacturing facility, which they claim is precisely what Australia needs because of the technologies involved and the high-paying jobs.

“This is a Cochlear-like opportunity” Vranes says. “It’s a bona fide opportunity and we want it to stay here in Australia.”

However, without government support it is likely the Nutromics factory will be located in the United States.

As well as gaining funding from Dexcom, Nutromics received funding from Artesian Ventures, which supported a $5.7 million funding round in August last year.

Mehta says the company will require hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to commercialise the health tracking device. Another funding round of $50 million to $100 is planned for 2023.

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