The four-university syndicate is part of a significant partnership expansion for Uniseed, announced today, which also includes Monash University. The commitment runs to 2025, with an opportunity to extend.
Established in 2000, Uniseed facilitates the commercialisation of its partners’ most promising intellectual property and secures targeted investment in resulting products and technologies. Uniseed’s existing partners are the universities of Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney and New South Wales, and the CSIRO.
As a partner in the consortium, Macquarie University will be able to pitch for seed funding for its own pipeline commercialisation projects, as well as receive investment returns from both its own and other commercialisation ventures in the sector. The University’s Incubator and DeepTech Incubator will also plug-in to the startup ecosystem created by the partnership, while Macquarie University’s Director of Commercialisation, Dr Kathryn Sunn, will initially represent the NSW university consortium on Uniseed’s Bio Investment Committee.
Macquarie University Pro Vice-Chancellor Research, Innovation and Enterprise, Professor Dan Johnson, said working with Uniseed will bolster the University’s existing startup support network.
“Uniseed is helping to bridge the gap between the incredible research that is conducted in Australia and the launch of commercially available products,” he said. “Uniseed takes a venture-building approach, which means Macquarie University is now set to benefit not only from Uniseed’s investments, but also from its significant expertise and resources.
“By partnering with Uniseed, we will continue supporting our researchers to become entrepreneurs, as we have done with the likes of spin-outs Number 8 Bio and Hydgene, but we can now do it at a greater scale and in conjunction with experienced venture builders and investors.”
Both new partners – Monash and the consortium – will match the remaining commitments of Uniseed’s existing members, providing an additional $6.75 million to ‘Fund-3’, taking the total fund size to $56.75 million. With the new funds injected and considering prior Fund-3 investments, a total of $23.63 million remains investible under Uniseed’s Fund-3.
Uniseed’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Peter Devine, says the expanded partner set demonstrates the important role Uniseed can play in investing in researchers, technologies and businesses that will change the world for the better.
“Each university represented in the partnership is of excellent quality and reputation – each ranked within the top 25 of Australian universities, and joined by CSIRO, Australia’s preeminent scientific institution,” he said.
“This is a very significant partnership expansion as it considerably expands the reach we can offer in funding new startups and commercialising technologies developed by Australian research institutions.
“Where previously we had the ability to support 42 per cent of spin-outs from research organisations in Australia, our partners will now cover more than half of all commercial research output generated by Australian institutions.”
To date, Uniseed has helped fund 66 startups with 17 going on to achieve commercial deals with international companies. Notable examples include Fibrotech, which was acquired by Shire Pharmaceuticals in 2014; Spinifex Pharmaceuticals, which sold to Novartis in 2015; Aurtra, which sold to Schneider Electric in 2022; and Kinoxis Therapeutics’ collaborative deal with Boehringer Ingleheim this year.
