Biotech Startup Nanophage Technologies Is Getting Prepped For Their Next Breakthrough – Going To Market

When Sean Bisset left New Zealand in 2019, he didn’t expect to return a few years later to a transformed biotech industry. He had headed offshore to Europe to find greener pastures following his PhD but, in the end, Palmerston North was able to offer Bisset what he’d been looking for all along.

When he returned home, he was more than happy to find the perfect position for him at Nanophage Technologies, where had worked part-time as an honours student while studying at Massey University.
 

“It is exciting to see how much the technology has progressed, moving from a research project to an actual business and product that we are getting ready for market. It was this opportunity which has made me realise this is where I want to focus my career, on bringing scientific research to life.”
 

But despite Bisset and the Nanophage team achieving something most people wouldn’t even be able to comprehend – creating functionalised biological nanorods that are a million times smaller than a dot – some of their hardest work is yet to come: getting ready for another round of capital raising.
 

“It really is such a mind shift moving from the academic side of things, where you’re in a lab, to then planning how the future of the company looks. Things like team structure, expertise, production, further research and development, new roles we will need – the list goes on. And of course we need the financial backing to be able to do all of that.”
 

Thankfully, Nanophage had financial seeding and startup support from Callaghan Innovation and Bridgewest, which included new-to-business workshops for founders to various research grants. Bisset says he is extremely grateful for the help to understand what it takes to commercialise an organisation that began life in a lab.
 

“There are so many different grants available out there, but speaking as a scientist, it wasn’t something I had really considered before – getting money to do research.”
 

Bisset’s main goal now is to secure funding to enable the team to get their product in the hands of other researchers who will be able to use Nanophage’s technology for a wide range of applications, from imaging to diagnostics.
 

He is hoping that they are only six months away for those in the life sciences research market, which will provide researchers with a more cost-effective and sensitive range of molecular tools, allowing other scientists to collect more detailed data.
 

Then they are poised to transform portable and self-diagnostic testing, which will offer more sensitive and powerful tools for clinical diagnostics.

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