Around 150,000 Australians are diagnosed with cancer every year.
While scientists have uncovered many of the drivers of cancer, about 80% of all disease-causing proteins have been considered “undruggable”.
New biotechnology company, Ternarx, aims at changing this statistic through the development of targeted protein degrader (TPD) technology, which is designed to destroy these “undruggable” proteins.
Unlike conventional drugs that only inhibit the activity of proteins, TPDs can target and destroy disease-causing proteins, completely removing the proteins from the cancer.
Ternarx is the first company of its kind in Australia, focusing on the development of TPD medicines and technology.
In 2023, the MRFF’s Frontier Health and Medical Research initiative awarded $15 million in funding to establish the Australian Centre for Targeted Therapeutics (ACTT) – a collaboration between experts from WEHI, the Children’s Cancer Institute and Monash University. WEHI has now spun out Ternarx to form a globally competitive biotech company and commercialise the ACTT technology.
Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, said: “It is an honour to officially launch Ternarx, a significant and exciting addition to Australia’s growing, high-quality medical and biotech sector. The technology it is pursuing has huge potential to create the next generation of treatments for cancer and other diseases that are currently untreatable.
“Ternarx is proof that Australia’s health and medical researchers are world leading. With support from the MRFF, our brilliant researchers can turn their ideas into new treatments that have potential to save thousands of lives, not just here but around the world.”