SG Austria

Prof. Walter H. Gunzburg, Executive Chairman, Dr. Brian Salmons, President and Chief Executive Officer, SGAUSTRIA, AUSTRIANOVA Singapore Pte Ltd

05 August 2010

By Ai San Yip, Erwin Chan and Wei Hsien Lee

(From Left to Right) Dr. John Dangerfield, Head of Laboratory; Ms Toa Shuit Yan Pauline, Research Assistant; Dr. Brian Salmons, President and Chief Executive Officer; Prof. Walter H. Gunzburg, Executive Chairman

SGAUSTRIA specialises in bio-encapsulation of living cells, bacteria and therapeutic agents using cellulose sulphate technology. The company has laboratories in the Centros Building, Biopolis, Singapore.

1. What were your backgrounds prior to founding SG Austria?

Walter Gunzburg and Brian Salmons: Originally we were both academics.

Both of them had great chemistry and laughed together ...

Walter: I am a biologist by professional training. In 1996, I was appointed full Professor of Virology in Vienna, Austria, where I headed the Institute of Virology. In 2004, I became Director of the newly established Christian Doppler Laboratory for Gene Therapeutic Vector Development which had a foreign module in Singapore working on combining nanotechnology with virology.

In 2008, I was appointed as Adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore. Currently, I am the co-founder, co-inventor and Chairman of the Board of Austrianova and SG Austria. I am also a founder and board member of ViruSure, a virus and prion testing company as well as a scientific advisor to the German biotech company, Paktis and the U.S. biotech company Tocagen Inc.

Brian: I received my Ph.D. in London. After postdoctoral positions in the United States and Switzerland, I became a group leader at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. Back then in Germany, I was working on retroviral vector mediated gene therapy. Subsequently, I was appointed as Scientific Director of Bavarian Nordic (1994 to 2001) and was actively involved in taking the company to the initial public offering (IPO) stage. During this time, I co-invented a cell bio-encapsulation technology which was shown to be safe and efficacious in a phase I/II clinical trial published in The Lancet. I co-founded the Biotech Company, Austrianova, a spin-off from the Veterinary Medicine University in Vienna. In 2007, I became the CEO of SG Austria.

2. Why have you chosen Singapore to venture in your business?

Brian: Austrianova was setup in Austria in 2001. We grew the company to a 60-odd team through various rounds of financing. The Singapore company, SG Austria was setup in 2007 with the vision of using our bio-encapsulation platform technology to provide for a spectra of applications, from drug delivery to nutrition and cosmetics.

Walter: In 2006, we identified Singapore as an attractive place for our future and growth. The motivation behind choosing Singapore was due to its high concentration in basic R&D sciences and its focus in stem cell research; besides, we saw great business opportunities here in South East Asia. 

Walter: We have previously worked in the U.S., Europe and S.E.A. And when you compare all three environments, a lot can be said of Singapore. Why is that so? There is much open communication here going on, where people are more willing to talk and share. This creates a lot more networking opportunities for us. For instance, Singapore has a typical cross-road situation where people come in and then move on. And while they are here, they are very much open (since this is a new environment, and they have no immediate roots here to make connections in this cultural sphere). Therefore, the secret is that you have a stopping-off place for an extended period of time, which will allow people to actively make new connections (common clichés). This is very different in Europe and the U.S., where people hang on to old networks and adopt the “I don’t need to develop new networks” mentality. Maybe, the advantage is that you have a high influx of foreigners coming into Singapore who are very happy living here and are much more open to communicating and networking. At the same time, Singaporeans are excited because these new ideas allow them to think “outside the box”; some of the Singaporeans are very keen to take up these ideas and network with the foreigners. These networking opportunities are evidently so strong that they drive social forms of effective learning in the creation of a biotech- related, but not biotech -centric social community. This is uniquely Singapore! 

Brian: In the U.S., there are formal meetings where experts come together, but outside of these meetings, it is often very difficult to network efficiently simply because of the size and geography of the country. Further we had a lot of support here from Economic Development Board (EDB) and Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

3. What are some of the challenges you've faced?

Walter: The common challenges that we faced are in the area of raising money to bring about that next growth and development phase required of our company. We realised that it is often difficult to attract foreign VCs (Venture Capitalists) to invest here in Singapore, and that locally there is also a lack of a well-developed VCs community. Few VCs here are capable of judging biotech investments very well and are often unwilling to take risk. This will definitely stifle growth. In times like this it is difficult to raise money.

There is also a common misperception about the riskiness of our business due to us being in the biotech space. Our business model is very much a de-risked model when compared to the normal biotech company whose sole success is highly dependent on the development of that single product. For us, we basically package cells for anybody and everybody, and are more of a solutions-based company using our enabling platform technology. We are working with many different companies from diverse industries. This will definitely buffer our variability in income from industry-specific risk factors, and will ensure a steady stream of income. The risk for our investors will therefore be much lower than for a normal biotech company.

4. Going forward, what are some of the future directions of SG Austria in the following few years to come?

Walter: Our vision is to become the world leader in cell-encapsulation. And our goal is to bring this technology to as many people as possible such that they will understand how this technology is going to enable them to move their products forward. Making our technology indispensible to other people through our continuous proof-of-concept research development work here in Singapore is what we will continue to work on.

Brian: Cell-therapy is the future. This is similar to the dawning of the era of antibodies. Antibodies took a long time to get to the market but when the first one finally made it, it was ground breaking – so much so that many companies are now clamouring to make antibodies. The situation with cell therapies is very similar. Cell-therapy is a new era in medicine, and it is certainly something that is going to be really huge. But right now, we are still at the very beginning. And this is the best moment to invest in this area. Therefore, we will continue to work on more projects with our partners and recruit more leaders and project managers. We will also most probably expand into manufacturing and production later on in South East Asia. This could be in Singapore, Malaysia China or India.

5. If there is one word of advice you can give to aspiring technopreneurs who are looking to start their business in the biotechnology/ biomedical industry, what would that be?

Brian: Tremendous perseverance! You must never take no for an answer, and never give up. You have to keep going. Whatever your boundaries are, they will be pushed to the extreme.           

Walter: Try to get as much input from as many people as you can. You do not have to be in agreement with all of them or even follow all the advice you get. But take it on board and think about it. Be flexible to incorporate this input into your structure. You have to take risks, and compromise and if necessary even work without salary to ensure the survival of your business. People who succeed straightaway are often the worst prepared people whereas, those who have a really tough time, are probably those who have learnt enough to be successful when faced with later challenges.

Brian: The other important thing is that we are part of a small community. If you have a disagreement with somebody else, you should try to resolve that disarrangement because very likely that you might come across the same person in another setting some time in the future.

Walter: Selling and marketing are really important and often under-estimated. There are creative marketing tools which you can utilize with lower costs. You can learn the different tools to use to communicate with people (public) through non-scientific ways, and bring the different groups of business people, commercialisation people and scientists together. The mixing-and-matching of these three different groupings can be really strong for the business. How can we translate something in the bio-field to something really catchy – think of ipad! How did they manage to market something like that? We need to go to that level to explain our business concept and ensure that it is going to be used by everybody. Just think how much upside potential we can have with the scientists, commercial guys, designers, computer engineers if we can get them to communicate at that level together– to harness the different creativities to create a selling idea based round our “bio-box” (jargon for bio-encapsulation). I am sure that if we can achieve this then we will be well rewarded for our ideas and creativity.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ai San Yip at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   and Erwin Chan at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it