When Alan Taylor was six, his parents gave him a telescope. From the 14th floor of the Sydney Housing Commission tower in Waterloo that was the family home, he absorbed the view of the moon and the stars. But he was learning more than just basic astronomy.
What he saw from his small balcony helped fire an insatiable curiosity and inquisitive mind. And, perhaps, an eye for the big picture.
Forty years later and Dr Alan Taylor – former professional rugby league player, bench scientist, investment banker and game-changing life science entrepreneur – is still gazing at the horizon, not only helping to drive developments in cancer diagnosis and treatment and imagining a galaxy in which patients can benefit from precision therapies, but also making sure that Australian scientific breakthroughs get the attention they deserve.
And it’s hardly a surprise to discover that his message to locals in this space is this: think big, stay lean. It’s the collaborations and relationships – not behemoth business structures or bells-and-whistles buildings – that will make the difference. He’s urging the Australian science community to imagine a clearer path to success in the translation space.
As Executive Chairman of Sydney-based Clarity Pharmaceuticals since 2013, he has just presided over the largest IPO of a life sciences company on the Australian Securities Exchange. The company has raised A$92 million to propel its next-gen radiopharmaceutical thearanostic (therapy and imaging) products through clinical trials, regulatory stages and into the market.
Always on the move
Taylor’s unique skillset, forged on the sporting field, in the lab and the world of high finance is a powerful blend of the personal and professional qualities needed to travel the long road of translational science: the capacity to see potential and create relationships, seize opportunities and persevere through the inevitable challenges.
The twin forces underpinning his professional life are his natural curiosity and education. When his grandparents immigrated after the war, they chose to live in multicultural Redfern in Sydney’s inner west. Eventually his parents moved to housing commission accomodation in South Coogee, and he would split his time between Redfern and the Eastern Suburbs. “I was a ‘houso’ kid, and if you had a BMX, a footy and some mates, you had everything you needed. But my parents made sure that I focused on education as a priority,” he told The Brilliant.
“I used to do science on my father’s wallet and watch, dropping them from the 14th floor balcony and seeing how long they took to hit the bottom. I came home with a bottle full of spiders one time and put it under my bed and scared the bejesus out of my mother, the poor thing, with about 50 spiders in this jar. I always had that sort of way of thinking, I guess, trying to explore and understand the world around me. I don’t think my parents fully appreciated my scientific mind back then.”
Taylor says that his parents, by no means wealthy, scrimped to send him to Waverley College where he succumbed to the siren song of sport. He joined the Sydney Roosters as a junior and played professional rugby league into his early twenties. Too small, perhaps, for stardom, he instead focussed on exercise and the way the body worked to gain a performance edge. He retained the interest but broadened his horizons when his league career ended: how could health science benefit the wider community? He did an applied science degree at Sydney Uni, majoring in exercise science, quickly following up with his Honours before steaming straight into a PhD.
Worthy? Yes! Entirely engaging? Well, no. Despite excellent mentors at prestigious research institutes like the Kolling and Garvan, Taylor concedes he was lost slogging away at the bench “talking to cells” all day.
“I realised that a lot of the stuff I liked happened in companies. It was the translation of science – moving from a concept or initial product developed in a lab, into human clinical trials – that I find really exciting, where working at basic science I find a little lonely and monotonous, so I made the move.”
It was an ambitious call to do a postgrad finance degree while completing his PhD but the dividends were immediate. Taylor stepped straight into investment banking and didn’t look back, specialising in commercialising life sciences and devices. Working hard in a small, committed team harked back to years in professional sport and he loved it. “I was mainly at a group called Inteq and we were doing the largest life sciences deals in the world at the time,” he says.
Science skills are very powerful and very well-regarded in the finance industry, given it’s quite a logical place, particularly in that investment banking area, which was about getting hold of companies and structuring them correctly and telling their story. And I spent the next 15 years in that space, in learning the game, if you like, in more the translation of science and how to set strategy and finance these sorts of opportunities.”
His dream of working with Australian companies at Inteq, however, hit an early snag. “The deals in Australia were too small for us,” he says bluntly. “Almost all Australian companies back then were looking for half a million dollars and the smallest we would raise would be $10 million.”
The work, while fun and rewarding, took him away from his young family too often and in April 2013 he swapped investment banking for more time at home with his three children.
Finding clarity
Within an hour of sending out an email to his contacts saying he was leaving investment banking, a number of opportunities came in, one of which was at Clarity Pharmaceuticals. The business was in the very early stages of developing radiopharmaceuticals for oncological diagnostic work. It had literally a couple of provisional patents and nothing else – no money, no employees, nothing – to its name and was struggling to raise the necessary funds.
“I originally said no, because of the pure diagnostic focus. It was simple for me, and I told them, ‘I don’t want to just tell people they are going to die. I want to focus on the cure, on better treatment.’ During that period I spent valuable time with my kids, and changed the strategy to treatments. In October of 2013 I joined as the full-time Executive Chairman,” he says.
Translating the burgeoning technology was the sweet spot for Taylor: he brought his extensive finance experience, his contacts and even his own money to the table, raised the capital to hire experienced people and currently has three therapeutic and diagnostic products at clinical trial stage in Australia and the US.
All three, developed in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, focus on super-accurate imaging and use ‘cage’ technology – chemical compounds that attach to a molecule and capture a copper radioactive isotope to target tumours with precision therapy.
The products show promise with breast and prostate cancer, and Taylor says they are also exploring the possibility of making a difference to the treatment of heartbreakingly aggressive brain cancers.
There’s potential, too, to explore the technology’s impact on childhood cancers like neuroblastoma. Traditionally, the rarity of these cancers means big pharma has shied away from this less lucrative research, but Taylor says that the US Food and Drug Administration is now incentivising work in that space. Bring a relevant product to market, he explains, and you receive a rare paediatric disease voucher, a “golden ticket” that enables fast-tracking of any other asset and that is tradeable and extremely valuable. Clarity Pharmaceuticals has opportunities for two vouchers because they have two products in clinical development, currently being trialled at five children’s cancer centres in the US.
So, do Australian innovators need to get up from the bench and enrol in business school to create the success Taylor thinks they deserve?
As he sees it, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the science.
But being a good scientist doesn’t make you good at translation. It’s a different set of skills, focus and priority. That’s the critical point.”
In the US, he says, effective science translators create simple, lean organisational structures and stick to an outsourcing model. They invest in the science and create collaborations that harness the necessary skills and experience to drive progress.
“A lot of Australian companies have put investor funds into building the Taj Mahal of facilities or the like. That’s not how they do it in the US. Our main asset is intellectual property and we’ve kept that very strong,” he says.
His achievements at Clarity are a case in point, born of his decade-and-a-half’s experience bringing good product to market. “I thought, ‘Why don’t we try and translate this? Do some initial work, build up the story, raise some capital, do some more work, build up the story, raise some more capital…’ And now we can talk about that and share the way it was done, from purely patents through to what is today the largest IPO ever of a life sciences company on the ASX,” he says.
In moving Australian science forward, Taylor is quick to mention that he believes the system isn’t broken, but incomplete: “we have incredible science and scientists here in Australia, and although we all do the same science, the skills and knowledge of a basic scientist are very different to those of a scientist focused on translation.”
“Australia almost entirely focuses on basic science, on publications and investment in highly tangible assets such as labs, buildings and infrastructure that everyone can see and feel good about. But translational science is different. It is about absolute focus on single initiatives which are risky and are protected by highly intangible assets such as intellectual property. And after all the hard work is done, working through all of the trials, manufacturing and regulatory filings needed to get a product to market, the only assets you have are two piles of paper – one of patents and one of data. And although this is not as pretty to look at as a new flashy building, or as prestigious as a publication in Nature, it is an opportunity to change people’s lives forever.”
“But maybe this is just a reflection of my upbringing as to which side I chose to be on. I never had a big house or any assets to be concerned with. The interest in science for me is all about us humans, and the pointy end of where we can make a difference in someone else’s life – that’s where I want to be.”
Taylor, who has been involved in eight or nine IPOs as an investment banker, says that taking a company public always generates fanfare but it’s a beginning, not an end. Radiopharmaceuticals are in the ascendancy: there’s lots of work to do.
“Here’s the line in the sand now: we’re in the public markets and it is to drive these products to better treat children and adults with cancer. That’s our priority.”
Article by Michelle Fincke
Photo Credit: Photo supplied
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