Changing the course of cancer treatment with AdvanCell

AdvanCell is a radiopharmaceutical company developing a revolutionary cancer treatment called Targeted Alpha Therapy, providing new hope for patients with untreatable cancers.

We spoke to AdvanCell’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Simon Puttick, about their partnership over the years with AIBN to drive the next generation of cancer therapies.

How does it feel to create a new technology? 

If I look back on the last five years, it's been an absolute roller coaster, with many exciting moments. We've created a brand-new manufacturing technology that has now been proven on a clinical scale. We’ve created a drug for prostate cancer that has shown exciting promise in Phase 1 clinical trials. We are now manufacturing doses every day for patients. It has been hugely rewarding and exciting.

How integral has AIBN been to AdvanCell’s success?

AIBN has been critical to AdvanCell’s growth, especially in the early stages.  We didn't have our own infrastructure or a large enough team. Access to infrastructure and to skilled personnel at AIBN was absolutely critical for us to complete our first preclinical experiments.

And as we look to future innovations that we may turn into new products, many of these are going to come out of the academic sector.

"We wouldn't be able to pursue these opportunities without access to the research infrastructure at AIBN."

How did the relationship between AIBN and AdvanCell evolve?

The relationship between AIBN and AdvanCell goes back a long way. I was a postdoctoral researcher in AIBN, and that seeded a deep personal history and a collaboration that goes back over a decade before AdvanCell even existed. That sentiment has continued and grown.

Many AdvanCell staff have been researchers at AIBN and we have shared PhD students, postdocs, funding and collaborative programmes. It’s become a very meaningful symbiotic relationship between the company and the University.

How do AIBN and AdvanCell’s goals align?

There's a huge alignment of goals between AIBN and AdvanCell – we're all driven to pursue the application of science for the benefit of patients. Our core alignment is that we’re both heavily focused on scientific innovation and creating better medicines. 

How has government investment contributed?

Both the state and federal government’s foresight to invest in research infrastructure in Queensland over the last 25 years has been critical to catalysing AdvanCell’s growth. 

Opportunities are certainly growing in radiopharmaceuticals and all the critical pieces are in place in Queensland. There’s now an environment that can catalyse those sparks and lead to new startups: infrastructure for fundamental research, clinical trials and manufacturing.  The continued investment in research infrastructure from both governments to grow research capabilities is critical to maximise these opportunities that are in front of us.

Wouldn’t it be a great achievement if we could create the next 5 companies like AdvanCell out of Queensland, capitalising on the synergy we have between industry, government and universities?

What’s the future for radiopharmaceuticals? 

It's a hugely exciting future. The clinical efficacy of radiopharmaceuticals has been demonstrated, and they have the potential to make a meaningful difference to the lives of patients with cancer. And this is just the beginning. This ability to add a radioactive atom to a targeting ligand has the potential to make differences to the lives of patients in breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and many, many more.

There are also exciting, early-stage thoughts about applications outside of oncology, in inflammatory diseases, chronic infection and autoimmune diseases. We need more research and innovation to really prove those concepts, but the seeds are there.

What’s the future with AIBN?

The University ecosystems, and AIBN in particular, have played a role in the development of this new drug to treat prostate cancer, supporting us with research infrastructure and expertise. We have a deep pipeline of new opportunities that we're excited about, some in collaboration with AIBN. We now have a broad portfolio in development to treat other cancers including melanoma, ovarian, lung, breast and pancreatic cancers. 

It's really a case of evaluating all those opportunities and then funnelling resources behind the ones that we think are going to be the winners. The future between AdvanCell and AIBN is expanding the projects that we've started.

"We've only just started scratching the surface of what we can do together."