Starting with any relevant education, walk me through the twists and turns of your career to date? How did one opportunity lead to the next + what was the key takeaway/ experience in each role + how did this lead you to where you are now)
Academics started with Chemistry, and then Veterinary Science, followed by 10 years of mixed practice in New Zealand. Stepping from practice into the Animal Health industry though was the first time I really understood how products were made. For the first three years, I had a technical role and was managing the development of novel products that were being developed in New Zealand for New Zealand dairy farmers. These were customer-centric products, with farmers flagging that an insoluble product that was sold generally through a capsule, would be much better suited to their farming practices if it was formulated through a liquid system. This innovation helped double the size of the local business and having customers involved in the development from the word go was incredibly important. These two aspects have stayed with me my whole career.
There's still no commercialized product for managing long term oestrous suppression on extensive beef farms to use apart from surgical sterilization
Over time in the industry, I became part of and led bigger teams which developed probably 25 or 30 products over 20 years. In that role about a decade ago, we met a third-party biotech from Melbourne, Australia and the company had a polymer technology with a proposed purpose of providing long-term oestrous suppression in extensive beef cattle. That project went on for about two years but while it didn’t meet its primary target goals, I have taken the learnings from that experience into the Sorensis project.
That whole project really got under my skin because the industry had been battling to find a marketable solution for 15-20 years. So here we are 10 years down the track and there's still no commercialized product for managing long term oestrous suppression on extensive beef farms to use apart from surgical sterilization. Many of the highly skilled vets doing the procedure are getting towards the end of their career so the beef industry is facing a future of declining resourcing availability in this space. The project stuck in my mind because it’s a welfare challenge solver, a beef sustainability solver and it’s a resource issue solver. I'm a cattle guy in essence, that's my background, so I really want the Sorensis model to be part of the solution and we’re around 18 months in on that process.
What was the pivotal moment that put you on your current founder path?
In terms of timing, I've always had this thing of doing something myself. You can sit within the corporate box and it's all good, you can learn lots, be well compensated and have a fantastic career, but there's something about getting on that treadmill yourself that I wanted to experience. After going through a second R&D restructuring, resulting in team and personal redundancy at the multinationals I was with I decided, right, I really want to have a go at this even though I'm at the end stage of my industry career. This, alongside a clear and longstanding industry need were the main two drivers for starting Sorensis.
Can you provide a quick summary of the technology/ area of innovation and its potential application?
As mentioned, we’re focused on long-term oestrous suppression in extensive beef cattle. The technology is a polymer-based implant and it'll contain a compound called a gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist. I am a big fan of repurposing actives that are well known to national regulators and this technology concept has been well proven. I’ve done a lot of regulatory work in my time, so with Sorensis I wanted to de-risk the project as much as possible before we go to a major partner seeking a development collaboration.
The technology is a polymer-based implant and it'll contain a compound called a gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist
What stage are you at?
We have made great progress during the in vitro assessment of the early formulation option and we're coming up to a key go, no go in the next six months. We've had a target goal of a daily payout rate and the team have managed to achieve that. I really want to get prototypes made and into cattle as soon as possible and the aim of these studies is to demonstrate the protype can be manufactured, applied easily, provide the desired clinical effect and all in the absence of adverse safety signals.
One of the challenges that Sorensis has is the clinical studies will be long because the producers are after a 12-month duration of effect. The need for 12 months duration of effect has been a key reason previous attempts have failed.
I believe a key aspect here is remaining very open to increasing your understanding of customer needs and always try to remain unemotional when assessing the data outputs in comparison to the Target Product Profile set for the project. Keeping an eye on the horizon and being aware of the competition activities and their progress is critical. Experience has taught me about the importance of deciding early if the project needs to pivot so constant discussions with potential customers and stakeholders is a priority.
The core part of what Sorensis wants to do is to make sure that quality of life is improved by using the technologies for different diseases and outcomes.
For the next stages for Sorensis we’ll likely look more into companion. There are some excellent technologies which if delivered in a more compliant or slow-release fashion, will provide better therapeutic outcomes in the animals. The core part of what Sorensis wants to do is to make sure that quality of life is improved by using the technologies for different diseases and outcomes.
Discuss the biggest challenges of getting to this point? With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done differently if anything?
Cost of goods and duration of effect are the top two challenges that are most likely to derail us. There's been a lot of research on implants and GnRH agonists and cattle and research clearly shows them to work in controlling reproductive status in cattle. Considering the top two challenges I mentioned I wanted to bring strategies that were directed to de-risk these challenges. Before I started Sorensis, I had a specific Go/No Go strategy to make sure I could source agonists at a price that would make it commercially feasible. I believe I have done that. The other thing is that the technology has not delivered the duration of effect, so I wanted to bring technology that had not been tried before to solve this challenge.
Luckily, our CSO Dr Rob Hunter, has a great network and reached out to contacts at Pendant BioSciences in the US, who have patented polymer technology which is much more flexible in the way that the polymer can be matched to each active ingredient that goes in. The Pendant technology offers a much broader range of adapting their polymer functionality to the active ingredient and target end points that is possible with standard polymer matrices. This is a technology that has not been seen in the Animal Health Industry, so Sorensis is bringing something new to the table.
How have you approached funding?
The project to date has been a true collaboration between me and Pendant Biosciences. I've bootstrapped the whole thing so far, but this has been made much easier due to the significant in-kind input Pendant have made as their contribution to the project.
I am planning a significant personal investment shortly, with the aim of increasing the resources and team capability to accelerate the project. One aspect of this is to finalize a good strategy to conduct small scale cattle studies at a site close to where the formulation is made in the US.
Once we reach a stage where we have viable protype options and have clearly identified a commercially useful clinical effect, I believe the project will be much more de-risked from an investor persepctive. So, my goal is to get there within 12 months from initiating the development. At this stage, we will regroup with previous investor contacts.
For Sorensis, I really want investors who are passionate about beef welfare, sustainability and have a passion to really support those industries maintaining rural communities.
For Sorensis, I really want investors who are passionate about beef welfare, sustainability and have a passion to really support those industries maintaining rural communities. My company's goal is to give producers an option to not use surgical sterilization and provide more flexibility in managing the reproductive status of extensive beef cattle. It's potentially a very significant contribution to an industry which doesn't get a lot of innovation.
The other key thing is that Sorensis is never going to be a sales and marketing organization. The idea is that we want to develop to a stage and then license or collaboratively develop to the stage of registration and then hopefully sell that technology.
What has been the greatest source of help/ guidance along the way?
That’s an easy one. He's been interviewed as part of this series, it's David Smith, the CEO of Ceres Tag. David's just been incredibly supportive and encouraging and a great business mentor for me as well.
Best advice you’d pass on to other founders?
Broadly, all founders have the shared challenge of getting known, telling people their story. This is where I think the whole resilience thing is important, you’ve just got to keep knocking on doors and updating people with what you're doing.
You’ve got to pick the people you work with carefully. Given the open and often challenging discussions required, trust is key. I'm very fortunate with our CSO, Dr Rob Hunter, who is a longtime friend and colleague and Sean Glinter from Pendant BioSciences as I totally trust their intentions and aims for the business outcome. So, for me, that's incredibly important.
Fundamental to any project is talking to customers. Even at the early stage, I've got good relationships with large pastoral companies, and I've unearthed new potential market needs in different aspects of their operations than I was unaware of before. This just reinforced to me that you can never stop talking to customers about their business and their operations to learn about applications for your technology.
you’ve just got to keep knocking on doors and updating people with what you're doing
What do you think are broadly the biggest needs and opportunities in the Animal Health and Petcare markets?
One of my other projects I'm working on is canine oncology, which I think is a real sleeper. There's been very few successful contributions, lots of things that have come from human aspects, but there's some very exciting companies who are working on a lot of immune modulation now. So, I think canine oncology is set for a real boost over the next five or 10 years.
Plus, for companion, it's always things like parasiticides.
From a production perspective, a lot of the discussion is around methane and climate which is obviously going to be top of mind. I like to break sustainable practices down into climate, nutrition, reproductive management, growth platforms and breeding. There's a lot of areas in there which are difficult to bring together. I really encourage companies to stick with considering innovation in the extensive beef areas, because there's still huge need for solutions to allow agriculture to continue to grow its critical contribution to the future of society. This requires founders to look for ways to provide producers with options to change some of the ways that currently they have to do things.
One of my other projects I'm working on is canine oncology, which I think is a real sleeper
What’s going to have the single biggest impact on change in your area of the market?
Competition is always the area to watch and as this is an unsolved unmet need for cattle, I know there is a broad interest in helping to solve this. The key for Sorensis is to maintain focus on the end goals for our technology because as with all things, one solution usually doesn’t meet all the customer needs.
Outside of competition, this would be the social license of using GnRH agonists in beef cattle. It may seem a simple question that we can potentially remove a painful procedure and totally replace it with a non-painful one. The science behind use of GnRH agonists in cattle is really well understood and while they're already registered in all the major global cattle markets, I know we will need to hold significant discussions with the supermarkets, processors and with exporters about the acceptance of this approach. This will take a lot of planning, funding and time. I’d love to start this as soon as I get a working prototype because these processes take two or three years at least.
What do the next two years have in store for you?
Number one would be to either sell the technology or have a major company as a collaborative partner taking the implant concept through to registration. And number two would be that Sorensis has a pipeline of other potential early-stage technologies in other species to make us an attractive development partner for a range of different companies.
