BresaGen, ambitious South Australia biotech firm gains global repute for gene/cell advances until its 2006 fadeout

Ambitious Adelaide biotechnology enterprise BresaGen (formerly Bresa: Biotech Research Enterprises South Australia) faded as a local identity in 2006 after gaining international repute, involvement and investment for its cutting-edge gene and cell science and technology. Main image shows one of the stem cells it produced as part of its work in Adelaide,

Adelaide’s BresaGen (formerly Bresa – Biotech Research Enterprises South Australia – from the 1970s, then Bresatec) was a brave bid – with flaws blighting its brilliance – to be at the global cutting edge of gene and cell science and technology.

With a scientific advisory board that, in 1999, was “the envy of every other biotech in Australia” and about to spring to prominence in the United States of America, BresaGen disappeared as a local identity from 2006.

The BioShares report in 1999 pointed to BresaGen have “one of the most outstanding advisory boards in Australia” including medicine Nobel Prize winner professor Peter Doherty, and the company’s links to Adelaide University, St Jude’s Research Hospital, Georgia University (USA), the National Institute of Medical Research (London), Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and the Arizona University (USA).

BresaGen (as Bresa) was born in Adelaide University’s biochemistry and gyneacology/obstetrics departments, with the reproductive medicine revolution by  professor Lloyd Cox a key influence. From that influence, agriculture scientists such as Robert Seamark and Julian Wella formed Bresa’s drive to take biotech advances in the laboratory out into practical commercial world. The funding needed for the long-term research to reach that commercial stage meant an early reliance on Adelaide University’s commercial arm Luminis.  This set up an ongoing and wavering tension between the universiy’s interests and BresaGen as a company.

Attracting outside research funding continued as a challenge for BresGen, even as public company that never made a profit and only modest sales. Aside from banks such as Macquarie looking a high-risk tax minimising investments, BresaGen attracted serious backing such as $2.5 million in 1997 from United Kingdom’s Biotechnology Investments Limited as advised by the Rothschild Bioscience Unit that saw BresaGen’s “significant growth prospects”.

That growth was built onblazing bravely into areas such as transplanting genes, transplanting pig organs into humans, leukaemia cures on the back of its work  in cell therapy and proteins.

Establishing itself in the United States of America at Georgia University in the early 2000s, BresaGen was working towards the concept of injecting stem cells into the brains of Parkinson’s disease sufferers. BresaGen was hindered by some data flaws that crept into its science. This may have resulted from the company being spread too thinly, with a big list of affiliated companies, and a lack of overall planned strategy and focus.

Chief executive John Smeaton, “always … a blue-sky optimist”, led BresGen’s charge into a wide range of areas. BresaGen’s networking strength, that it took to get its foothold in the United States, was nurtured in the cosy medical/science/technology club in Adelaide formed by the university departments, the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science with its Hanson centre, and the Royal Adelaide Hospital in close vicinity. This club was BresaGen’s strength in shared knowledge but could also lead to personal links influencing the company taking so many directions.

• Information from L. J. Hewerdine, “The founding of BRESA”. (2008), Adelaide Research and Scholarship, Adelaide University.