It’s fair to say Australia is stacked with world-class researchers with big ideas. We have a track record of scientific breakthroughs, especially in healthcare innovations like the cervical cancer vaccine and the cochlear implant. But turning promising discoveries into products, companies and real-world impact requires, dare we say, a very particular set of skills.
The good news? While some skills can only be acquired over a very long career, CSIRO’s ON Accelerate accelerator program is back to help researchers and academics build the commercial know-how and networks needed to translate breakthrough science into commercial success in a far shorter timeframe.
From women’s health and cancer diagnostics to non-opioid pain relief, graduates of ON Accelerate are transforming research into ventures with life-changing impacts on a global scale. You could be next, with applications for the next cohort open from July 27 to August 31.
“I was looking for a program that understood the unique challenge of translating research into a venture.”
When Associate Professor Michelle Hill joined CSIRO’s ON Accelerate program, ProSeek Bio was less than a year old. The clinical-stage startup is developing a blood test to help clinicians better assess suspicious ovarian masses and potentially reduce unnecessary surgery, helping close the diagnostic gap in women’s health, beginning with ovarian cancer.
“I was building the foundations for commercialisation,” Hill tells Startup Daily. “I’d completed customer discovery, enrolled in an MBA, and recruited our first employee, Leo Bolero, who later became my co-founder. ON Accelerate offered practical startup thinking, an incredible founder community, and an introduction to Australia’s early-stage investment ecosystem.”
One of the biggest lessons was understanding what early-stage investors look for beyond great science.
“Coming from a research background, I hadn’t yet appreciated how critical corporate structure is to early-stage investors. ON Accelerate gave us the knowledge, mentors and confidence to recognise the issue and work through a complex process to resolve it,” shares Hill.
The program connected ProSeek Bio with medtech entrepreneur Warren Bingham, whose mentorship helped strengthen the venture’s quality and regulatory foundations from the outset.
“Warren reinforced the importance of building a quality management system from day one and helped shape our regulatory strategy,” Hill says.
Within five months of graduating, the company had secured its first term sheet.
Since completing the program, ProSeek Bio has gained international momentum, attracting investors, industry recognition and support.
“Closing our oversubscribed seed round validated far more than our technology – it validated the company we had built. Along the way, recognition such as selection into the BioTools Innovator Accelerator (top 5% globally), a podium finish at JPM Week, and national grants and awards have reinforced that we’re building something with global potential.”
“Mentorship from experienced leaders across medtech, healthcare and business was the main draw.”
PredictX Health is helping personalise cancer treatment through its AI-powered oncology platform. Using 3D body composition analysis from routine CT scans, the platform automatically calculates personalised chemotherapy dosing, replacing decades-old manual formulas still used worldwide. Its goal is to minimise treatment toxicity while improving patients’ chances of survival.
Following a $1.6 million pre-seed funding round in late 2025, PredictX Health joined CSIRO’s ON Accelerate program to strengthen its commercial strategy.
Dr Justin Yeung, Chief Medical Officer, says although the team was one of the more advanced groups in the cohort, “we still felt that all teams managed to get tailored teaching and exposure to their specific needs; no question was too small; no ask too big.”
Through mentors, the team was challenged to question its assumptions about customers, users and the problem it was solving.
“It taught us the need to keep on questioning what we are doing, learn to pivot, learn to drill down to what the problem statement was, learn to take on tasks which we were not familiar with [and] learn to speak to as many people as possible,” he tells us.
“By doing so, we were able to really identify the current health need: who our payers and users were, as in healthcare they are generally not the same people.”
One practical exercise has remained particularly valuable: “Being able to distil our problem and solution into a one-minute video which formed the basis of our ‘pitch’ – we treasure this video greatly.”
During the program, PredictX Health submitted its platform for regulatory approval in Australia and the US, secured leading oncology platform provider Magentus as its channel partner, and signed a Strategic Oncology Collaboration MoU with Cognis Technology and Alibaba Health, opening a significant future market in China.
“The program demystified the commercialisation process and replaced that unknown with a systematic approach.”
Enhanced Analgesics is developing safe, data-driven RNA therapeutics to tackle chronic pain and reduce reliance on opioids. Spun out from the University of Sydney, the company joined CSIRO’s ON Accelerate program after the university’s tech transfer office recognised it was at the right stage to begin the journey from research to commercialisation.
CEO, Professor Greg Neely, says the program transformed commercialisation from an unknown into a structured, achievable process.
“It gave us a step-by-step approach that helped us more confidently move towards our goal of getting a company off the ground,” he tells Startup Daily.
One of the program’s biggest benefits, Neely says, was giving the team licence to engage with patients, clinicians, investors, manufacturers and regulators.
“That helped us adjust and position our asset more effectively, increasing the chance that we make it through the development process to have a real and positive impact on society.”
The program also helped the team communicate its science more effectively.
“As a bunch of scientists, we had some really cool tech but we didn’t really know how to communicate this or pitch it effectively. Through repeated hands-on practice in messaging, we came away with a confident, clear message,” says Neely.
Following ON Accelerate, Enhanced Analgesics launched L3 Labs, won the 2025 InnovationAus Health Tech Award, while Professor Neely received the AbVance Commercialisation Award at the NSW Drug Discovery Forum. The company has also secured funding through a national AEA grant and a seed venture fund.
“It’s encouraging to see global recognition of what’s possible when research translation is backed by the right support.”
For Tennille Eyre, CSIRO ON Innovation program director, those stories reflect the purpose of ON Accelerate, which places alongside leading science translation initiatives globally.
“Australia’s research translation pipeline is critical national infrastructure, and we can’t wait to see what the next cohort of ON Accelerate teams will achieve,” says Eyre.
Applications for the next ON Accelerate intake are now open. Register for an information session and find out more at this link.
