Ternarx: developing next-generation cancer drugs

Dr Jameson is Business Development Lead at WEHI and is currently responsible for the commercialisation of inventions across immunology, inflammation, infection, global health and early stage drug discovery.

With over 15 years’ experience in commercialisation and business development, she has led the commercialisation of new technologies through partnerships with major industry and biotech companies and has been involved in the conception and formation of biotech spinouts, securing deals in a range of fields. Over the last year she has been central in securing more than a dozen collaboration, license and commercialisation agreements for translational projects, as well as initiating discussions on many others.

Dr Jameson is also a non-executive director for Transcendomics, which is making genomic testing simpler, safer and more scalable through the Genomical® software platform.

Dr Jameson has a PhD in Chemistry, a Master of Entrepreneurship and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Dr Reese is a senior partnering, licensing and commercialisation executive with over 25 years of experience across the biotech and pharma industry, as well as within the public hospital and university sectors.

Her experience includes over 15 years at CSL Limited where she held various roles, including Director of In-Licensing. At CSL she gained broad experience across the business with a particular role focus in R&D Commercialisation, Business Development and Licensing. Prior to joining Monash University, Amanda held the position of Director of Commercialisation and Business Development at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre where she was responsible for the identification, protection and commercialisation of the organisations innovative research discoveries. This included facilitation of Peter Mac spin-out companies and commercialisation oversight to the hospital’s national Centre of Excellence in Cellular Immunotherapy.

Dr Reese is a Director Strategic Partnerships at Monash University, focused on leading the identification and development of industry and corporate partnerships on a global scale. Dr Reese has a Bachelor of Science with Honours and PhD in pharmacology from Monash University.

Dr Chris Burns is an experienced drug discovery leader having worked in various roles in pharma, biotech and academia for over 30 years.

After completing a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, Dr Burns undertook postdoctoral studies in the USA before moving to Pfizer UK, as a senior scientist. After 5 years he returned to Australia and worked as Head of Chemistry for the biotech company Ambri. He then moved to the Melbourne-based biotech Cytopia as Head of Medicinal Chemistry and later as Research Director. Over this time Dr Burns led teams in the discovery of two anti-cancer agents that entered clinical trial (including the drug momelotinib which was recently approved by the US FDA).

Dr Burns was recruited to WEHI as a Laboratory Head and then Business Development Manager, before taking on executive and leadership roles with a number of privately-held biotechnology companies in Melbourne. Dr Burns is the inventor on over 30 patents and a co-author on over 65 scientific publications, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Dr Burns is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Amplia Therapeutics, an ASX-listed biotechnology company.