 | This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject , potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral.(January 2016) |
Paul A. Hopper (born 1956) is an Australian bioentrepreneur who has been associated since 2003 with a number of biotechnology companies, most of them publicly traded.
Born in PNG to a prominent post WW2 Australian colonial family, Hopper was educated in Sydney at the King's School, Parramatta and subsequently received a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Political Science from the University of New South Wales. [1] In 1988 he cofounded Alpha Healthcare, an Australian private hospital group based in Sydney where was managing director until 1999. He began his career as a bioentrepreneur in the early 2000s.
Hopper's first biotechnology company was the ASX-listed Australian Cancer Technology Ltd, where he was CEO based in Sydney from September 2003 to February 2005. Among the drugs which Australian Cancer Technology worked on during this period was RP101, [2] a small molecule which, by binding to heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27), was designed to prevent the induction of resistance to chemotherapy. By early 2005 Hopper had relocated from Sydney to San Diego in order to further develop Australian Cancer Technology, but shortly after the move he resigned. [3]
In California in November 2005 Hopper joined Cappello Global, an investment bank based in Los Angeles. Hopper had been the Australian representative of Cappello since 2002. [4] At Cappello in California he became Head of the Life Sciences and Biotechnology Group as well as the Australia Desk. Over the next nine years Hopper was involved in the corporate development of a number of Life Science companies, [5] including:
Hopper returned to Australia in 2015 in order to further develop a number of biotechnology companies of which was an executive. Hopper is currently on the board of three ASX-listed companies:
An oncolytic virus is a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells. As the infected cancer cells are destroyed by oncolysis, they release new infectious virus particles or virions to help destroy the remaining tumour. Oncolytic viruses are thought not only to cause direct destruction of the tumour cells, but also to stimulate host anti-tumour immune system responses. Oncolytic viruses also have the ability to affect the tumor micro-environment in multiples ways.
Virotherapy is a treatment using biotechnology to convert viruses into therapeutic agents by reprogramming viruses to treat diseases. There are three main branches of virotherapy: anti-cancer oncolytic viruses, viral vectors for gene therapy and viral immunotherapy. These branches use three different types of treatment methods: gene overexpression, gene knockout, and suicide gene delivery. Gene overexpression adds genetic sequences that compensate for low to zero levels of needed gene expression. Gene knockout uses RNA methods to silence or reduce expression of disease-causing genes. Suicide gene delivery introduces genetic sequences that induce an apoptotic response in cells, usually to kill cancerous growths. In a slightly different context, virotherapy can also refer more broadly to the use of viruses to treat certain medical conditions by killing pathogens.
Zygmunt Edward "Ziggy" Switkowski,, is a Polish Australian business executive and nuclear physicist. His most public role was as the chief executive officer of Australia's largest telecommunications company Telstra from 1999 to 2004. During his tenure, he oversaw the privatisation of the then government-owned corporation through a series of public tranche sales. Currently, he is the chairman of both NBN Co and Suncorp, a director of Healthscope, Oil Search and Tabcorp and the Chancellor of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
C.H. Boehringer Sohn AG & Co. KG is the parent company of the Boehringer Ingelheim group, which was founded in 1885 by Albert Boehringer (1861–1939) in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany. As of 2018, Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, and the largest private one. Headquartered in Ingelheim, it operates globally with 146 affiliates and more than 47,700 employees. Unlike most large pharmaceutical companies which are listed, the company is private and fully owned by the Boehringer, Liebrecht and von Baumbach families. The company's key areas of interest are: respiratory diseases, metabolism, immunology, oncology and diseases of the central nervous system. Boehringer Ingelheim is a full member of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). The corporate logo of Boehringer Ingelheim depicts a stylized rendition of the central section of the imperial palace of Charlemagne.
Kate Lamont is an Australian cook, political aspirant and author.
Sundance Resources Limited is an Australian mining company, based in Perth, Western Australia, whose main assets are iron ore leases in Cameroon near Mbalam, and across the border in the Republic of Congo. Following the loss of the Congo mining licence in 2020, Sundance Resources delisted from the Australian Securities Exchange and sued Congo to acquire $8.76 billion in compensation.
Nuix Ltd is an Australian technology company that produces investigative analytics and intelligence software for extracting knowledge from unstructured data. The applications of the company's technology reportedly include digital forensics, financial crime, insider investigations, data privacy, data governance, eDiscovery and regulatory compliance. As of December 2020, the company's software was reportedly used by 1000 customers in 79 countries. The company has its headquarters in Sydney, Australia with offices in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
Infigen Energy (Infigen), operating under this name since 29 April 2009, is a developer, owner and operator of renewable energy generation assets in Australia. Infigen's wind farm portfolio has an installed capacity of 557 MW. Most of Infigen's assets generate electricity from renewable sources and are eligible to sell Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) under the mandatory Renewable Energy Target scheme, which operates in Australia under the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000. Since 2020, Infigen Energy has been a subsidiary of Iberdrola.
Talimogene laherparepvec, sold under the brand name Imlygic, is a biopharmaceutical medication used to treat melanoma that cannot be operated on; it is injected directly into a subset of lesions which generates a systemic immune response against the recipient's cancer. The final four year analysis from the pivotal phase 3 study upon which TVEC was approved by the FDA showed a 31.5% response rate with a 16.9% complete response (CR) rate. There was also a substantial and statistically significant survival benefit in patients with earlier metastatic disease and in patients who hadn't received prior systemic treatment for melanoma. The earlier stage group had a reduction in the risk of death of approximately 50% with one in four patients appearing to have met, or be close to be reaching, the medical definition of cure. Real world use of talimogene laherparepvec have shown response rates of up to 88.5% with CR rates of up to 61.5%.
Immunocore is a global commercial-stage biotechnology company, based in Oxfordshire, which researches and develops biological drugs using soluble T-cell receptor technology.
Edward (Ted) Pretty, is an Australian businessman and lawyer.
Imugene Ltd is a biotechnology company working in cancer immunotherapy. The company's lead product is HER-Vaxx, a therapeutic cancer vaccine for the treatment of gastric cancer and breast cancer, where the cancer is HER-2-positive. Imugene was planning a Phase Ib/II clinical study of HER-Vaxx in gastric cancer which it intended to initiate in 2016. Imugene stock is publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
Ursula Wiedermann is an Austrian medical scientist who has made significant contributions in the field of allergies and of cancer immunotherapy. She is currently Professor of Vaccinology at the Medical University of Vienna. Wiedermann's work in the field of B cell peptide vaccines led to the creation of HER-Vaxx, an immunotherapy for the treatment of HER-2-positive cancers. This vaccine is currently being taken into mid-stage clinical development in gastric cancer by the biotech company Imugene, where Wiedermann is Chief Scientific Officer.
Viralytics Ltd is an Australian biotechnology company working in the field of oncolytic viruses, that is, viruses that preferentially infect and kill cancer cells. The company's oncolytic virus product, called Cavatak, is currently in clinical trials in metastatic melanoma and other cancers. The drug was granted Orphan Drug status in advanced melanoma in December 2005.
Prescient Therapeutics Ltd is a clinical stage oncology company. The company is focused on the development of a universal CAR-T platform (OmniCAR), enhanced CAR-T cell manufacturing & function (CellPryme) and on two small molecule drug targeted therapies.
Enadenotucirev is an investigational oncolytic virus that is in clinical trials for various cancers.
ONCOS-102 (Ad5/3-D24-GMCSF), is an oncolytic adenovirus previously described as CGTG-102. It is currently in orphan drug status for soft tissue sarcomas.
Innate Immunotherapeutics (INNM) was a biopharmaceutical company, previously known as Virionyx, with headquarters in Sydney, Australia and a branch in Auckland, New Zealand. Their focus in 2009 was the "development of a new generation of immune response modifier for potential use in the treatment of a range of infectious diseases, certain cancers, and as a novel cellular and humoral adjuvant, " and developed a proprietary multiple sclerosis drug, MIS416. In April 2009 the firm changed its name to Innate Immunotherapeutics to reflect their focus on the development of MIS416, and moved their headquarters from Auckland, New Zealand to Sydney, Australia. On June 22, 2017, Innate Immunotherapeutics announced that the MIS416 clinical trials undertaken to evaluate its efficacy in managing secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS), had "failed to show any clinically meaningful benefit or statistical significance." These findings resulted in the stocks crashing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
Regis Resources is an Australian-based, Australian Securities Exchange-listed (ASX) gold producer and explorer based in Subiaco, Western Australia.
Westgold Resources is an Australian-based, Australian Securities Exchange-listed (ASX) gold producer and explorer based in Perth, Western Australia.