As the world’s first life-science organisation providing intellectual property asset management services and scientific advice to the global biopharmaceutical industry, Sydney-based IQNovate Ltd sits squarely in an in-demand space.

In less than two years, IQNovate has achieved a 595 per cent return for shareholders who invested in the company’s IPO.

While the global biopharmaceutical sector is on track for steady growth in coming years – the market for human therapeutics is expected to grow to approximately US$1.2 trillion by 2016 – companies operating within the sector are struggling to address the challenges of dwindling pipelines, health care cost containment and steadily rising costs for drug development and clinical trials.

Global management consulting firm McKinsey recently warned pharmaceutical companies that they would “require new and improved capabilities in financial planning, capital allocation, communication, the management of external resources and market access”.

In response to those pressures there is an increasing trend among biopharmaceutical firms to outsource drug development activities in order to reduce fixed costs, improve the productivity of their research and development pipelines and accelerate time to market.

With a business model designed to provide integrated scientific advisory services and contract drug development services IQNovate has introduced a global innovation. The contract drug development services provided by IQNovate represent industry best practises and deliver efficiencies, productivity gains and economies of scale for its clients.

The drug development process is high cost and high risk; About 1.5 billion and 10-15 years per compound, for every 10,000 compounds that are tested, only five will advance to clinical trials and only one will achieve regulators registration.

IQNovate chairman and CEO George Syrmalis said risk management was key to success in the sector.

“In this business it is paramount that risks need to be weighed against one another, not against zero risk, or acceptable or unacceptable risk,” he said.

“We make cars that go fast because they have brakes to minimise the risk of that speed – it’s a trade-off we are willing to make. The goal should be to maximize wealth-creating opportunities rather than to minimize risk, A ship in harbour is safe – but that is not what ships are for.”

Most of IQNovate drug development services address pipeline products at early phase III. IQNovate also formulates and executes strategy for, extending indications and label as well as extending patent lives, thus maximising returns on patented and off-patent drugs.

Biopharmaceutical companies are keenly interested in strategies for extending the patent life of drugs and maximising therapeutic area value.

IQNovate provides a crystal clear value proposition to its pharma clients: quicker time of drug to market, thus increasing revenue, and reduction of operating expenses.

IQNovate generates revenue on a fee for service basis and royalties based on the successful delivery of its services. Royalties may include an interest in product sales or equity interest in the asset.

Australia is a gold mine of early stage biotechs; the Australian biotech sector boasts the largest listed life science sector as a proportion of GDP. At last count, there were more than 500 biotechnology and pharma companies and more than 650 medical device companies in Australia and numerous world-class medical research organisations.

The Australian Securities Exchange has 92 listed life science companies.

The company’s first agreement after listing was to establish a partnership with JH Biotech Australasia to commercialise pharmaceutical-grade products. IQNovate was chosen to lead the production of novel forms of Omega 3, vitamin C, hydrolysed fibres and chelated minerals.

IQNovate is poised to grow through acquisitions of CRO’s in the Asia Pacific region. To that end, the company has signed an agreement with India-based Connect Biotech to scout on its behalf for suitable acquisition candidates in India as well as the broader APAC region.

The IQNovate management team as well as technical team has decades of global drug development experience and proven expertise in advising biotech’s and other stakeholders on life science projects.

IQNovate completed an initial public offering of 6 million shares at AU$0.20 per share in December 2011 which generated net proceeds of AU$1.2 million. The IPO was followed by two private placements.

The company is also cross listed on the US OTC Market (OTC:IQNDY) and the GXG Market (GXG:IQN), Europe’s leading SME Exchange, in line with its strategy to expand its global presence.

IQNovate believes in growth through   global acquisitions and aspires to expand its service offering to the global biopharma industry to include preclinical studies, clinical trials, contract sales and promotional-marketing material development as well as biosimilars development.

IQNovate has positioned itself in such a way to enable it to capture maximum value from the biotechnology evolution which is occurring right now as well as the consolidation of the biopharma industry as a result of the GFC combined with the drying up pipelines of new compounds and compounds coming off patent.

For further information, please contact:

Con Tsigounis
Investor Relations