Dr Alexandra Tickle, the commercialisation manager at Otago Innovation, has been named as a finalist in the Commercialisation Professional section of the KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards.
The poster child for Otago Innovation, a university-owned company which commercialises the research of its academics, is Amaroq, a company working in the field of cancer drug development.
While the $14million in investment Amaroq attracted as a start-up company is by far and away a record for Otago Innovation, the firm has managed 131 projects, with varying degrees of success.
‘‘Not all of them make it to the market, and I would say three out of four projects don’t even make it through our process.
‘‘Once you have a deal completed that deal might not be converted into money, and it is a long incubation time. Last year we had a deal done which was done in 2004 and during lockdown we received money for it, which we hadn’t actually expected.’’
Amaroq, which was aiming to commercialise Dr Sarah Diermeier’s work, was Otago Innovation’s newest and most exciting deal, Dr Tickle said.
‘‘We will see in the next two to three years how that will go, but Sarah is amazing and we work really well together.’’
The award winners will be announced at a function in Auckland on September 16.
