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From Lab Bench to Boardroom: How WEHI Is Building the Next Generation of Biotech Startups

How WEHI turns laboratory discoveries into biotechnology startups and new medicines

⏱ In 30 Seconds

✓ A scientific discovery alone cannot become a medicine. It also needs intellectual property, funding, product development and clinical testing.
✓ Many promising discoveries stall in the so-called Valley of Death, where the science may be strong but the resources needed to advance it are missing.
✓ WEHI created 66ten, a venture investment fund designed to help promising discoveries move towards company formation and commercial development.
✓ Startups such as Proxima Bio, Ternarx and Anaxis Pharma illustrate how discoveries can continue developing outside the traditional academic laboratory.

Working in a medical research institute, I have often wondered what actually happens to a discovery after the paper is published.

As scientists, much of our attention is naturally focused on the research itself: designing experiments, analysing data, publishing papers and, hopefully, discovering something new.

But even an important discovery is still a very long way from becoming a medicine. Intellectual property, further development, funding and clinical testing all have to follow.

Watching a growing number of biotechnology startups emerge from WEHI made me increasingly curious about that part of the story.

Companies such as Proxima Bio, Ternarx and Anaxis Pharma are useful examples because they show what may need to happen after the science itself has produced something promising.

How do you get a promising discovery out of the laboratory and give it a realistic chance of reaching patients?

The Missing Link Between Discovery and Medicine

For decades, WEHI followed a model familiar to many research institutes.

Scientists made discoveries, the institute protected the intellectual property, and external companies could then license the technology and take responsibility for the next stages of development.

Venetoclax is one of the best-known examples.

Research into BCL-2 and apoptosis at WEHI helped establish the biological foundation for a new therapeutic strategy. Years of collaboration with biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners eventually helped turn that science into an approved cancer medicine.

But stories like Venetoclax are unusual.

Many laboratory discoveries never reach the stage where a large pharmaceutical company is ready to invest.

The science may still be too early. The intellectual property may need strengthening. More experiments may be required. A development plan may not yet exist.

That gap between academic discovery and investable product development is one of the hardest parts of biomedical translation.

Crossing the Valley of Death

Biotechnology often refers to this difficult period as the Valley of Death.

It describes the stage where a scientific idea may look promising but has not yet accumulated enough evidence, funding or commercial structure to move confidently towards clinical development.

At this point, the project may need substantial additional work.

More validation experiments
Better understanding of the disease opportunity
Intellectual-property protection
Drug-development expertise
Manufacturing or formulation planning
Regulatory strategy
Investment

Academic research funding is not always designed to support all of these activities, while traditional investors may consider the project too early or too risky.

A potentially useful discovery can therefore stall even when the underlying science remains promising.

WEHI's newer venture-building model is designed to help address this gap.

66ten: Investing Earlier in the Journey

One part of that strategy is 66ten, WEHI's venture investment fund.

Its role is different from simply waiting until an external company decides to license a discovery.

The fund can support projects earlier, helping move them towards the point where a standalone biotechnology company can be created.

That process can include protecting intellectual property, testing the commercial opportunity, assembling a founding team and recruiting people with experience in biotechnology development.

The institute is therefore asking not only “Is this discovery scientifically interesting?” but also “Is there a realistic pathway for this discovery to become a product, a therapy or a new company?”

Case Study: Proxima Bio

Proxima Bio is one example of this approach.

The company is developing cell-surface targeted protein degraders, an emerging therapeutic strategy with potential applications in autoimmune disease and cancer.

Rather than immediately transferring the technology to a large pharmaceutical company, the startup structure allows the platform to continue developing within a dedicated company.

That gives the science more time to mature while the company builds the expertise and resources needed for drug development.

Case Study: Ternarx

Ternarx represents a similar model.

The company was built around WEHI research in targeted protein degradation and is developing potential therapies for diseases including neuroblastoma and prostate cancer.

Targeted protein degradation is itself a good example of why early biotechnology development can require a specialised company.

The scientific concept may begin in an academic laboratory, but converting it into drug candidates requires medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, disease models, formulation, intellectual property and eventually clinical-development expertise.

A startup can provide a structure in which those different activities are brought together around one technology.

Case Study: Anaxis Pharma

A similar path can be seen in research on necroptosis and inflammation.

Years of basic research and disease modelling at WEHI helped establish the biological importance of this regulated cell-death pathway.

That science contributed to the development of Catalyst Therapeutics and later Anaxis Pharma, which has been advancing anti-inflammatory compounds in partnership with Servier.

The company provided a vehicle for research that had begun as fundamental biology to continue along a development pathway that an academic laboratory alone would struggle to support.

Why Create a Startup at All?

A biotechnology startup is not necessary for every scientific discovery.

Some technologies can still be licensed directly to an established pharmaceutical company. Others may remain most useful as academic research tools or may never be suitable for commercial development.

But for some discoveries, a startup fills an important gap.

It can provide a dedicated team whose entire purpose is to develop one technology towards a product.

It can raise investment specifically for that development programme.

It can also bring in expertise that is often limited inside academic laboratories, including drug development, commercial strategy, regulatory planning and company management.

Academic research may primarily ask “Does the biology work?”, while a startup must also ask “Can this biology become something that can actually be developed for patients?”

What Changes When Science Becomes a Company?

For an academic scientist, this transition can be unfamiliar.

Academic research is often organised around biological questions, publications and grant funding.

A biotechnology company has to think differently.

It must decide which experiments are essential for development, which indication should be pursued first, how intellectual property should be protected, how much money will be required and what evidence future investors or pharmaceutical partners will need to see.

The science remains central, but it now sits inside a much larger development process.

That difference is one reason promising discoveries can fail during translation even when the original biology is strong.

Beyond the Published Paper

Looking at companies such as Proxima Bio, Ternarx and Anaxis Pharma has made me appreciate how much has to happen after the experiments are finished and the paper is published.

The science has to be developed further. Intellectual property has to be protected. Funding has to be found. People with very different expertise have to become involved.

And at some point, a discovery that began as a research project may need an organisation whose only job is to carry it forward.

There is also a personal reason why I follow these companies with particular interest. Some of the researchers involved are people I have worked alongside in the same division or whose research I have followed closely at WEHI.

I also spent about two years working on a project for Automera, a biotechnology startup headquartered in Singapore. It gave me first-hand experience of how a drug development project within a startup can differ from research conducted in an academic institute.

That experience also made me more interested in what happens when an idea that begins in the laboratory moves into a company and towards drug development.

That is what I find interesting about WEHI's growing startup ecosystem. It exposes a part of biomedical research that is easy to overlook when you spend most of your time at the laboratory bench.

Having worked alongside some of the researchers now taking on these new challenges, I wish them and their companies the very best, and hope their science will ultimately lead to new medicines for patients.

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This article is intended for general educational purposes. Company structures, funding arrangements and development programmes may change over time.

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How WEHI Turns Lab Discoveries Into Biotech Companies