What is the innovation?
Indee Labs has developed hardware that delivers genetic material to human immune cells using microfluidic vortex shedding or, more simply, microscopic turbulence.
What benefit does it bring?
The innovation allows use to gently porate the cell membrane with (1) high yield, (2) fast processing of (3) small & large volumes along with (4) no perturbation of the T cell state. Furthermore, the whole assembly fits in your palm and is operated with compressed nitrogen.
What commercial success and/or benefit to society has it achieved?
The innovation was a result of the Medical Device Commercialisation Training Program, initiated by NSW Health and delivered by Cicada Innovations. Indee Labs has gone on to receive more than A$2.3M in dilutive and non-dilutive financing from Australian (Main Sequence Ventures) and American (Y Combinator, Social+Capital) investors.
Indee Labs recently completed its first demonstration with a US$50M market capitalisation Pharma company and is moving towards product-market fit in 2018.
What lessons learnt can you share?
We’ve found the dual Australian-American operating structure is ideal due to (1) Australian R&D capabilities and (2) American market conditions.
Australia continues to be a secret weapon for us. We’ve been able to achieve key R&D milestones in short timelines that would not be possible without Australian research infrastructure. This continues to (1) impress our investors and (2) prospective customers. I am also convinced this would not have been able to happen without critical R&D infrastructure in Australia.