Celebrating 25 years of pioneering pharmaceutical development from Queensland’s diverse ecosystem at World Science Festival Brisbane (WSFB)

Today (THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2025), we (QBiotics Group) are celebrating our 25^th anniversary, coinciding with the World Science Festival Brisbane (WSFB), March 21 - 30, 2025.

Starting in a modest basement laboratory in 2000, our company has harnessed the power of nature to discover & develop solutions for challenging medical conditions. Throughout our evolution into a clinical-stage life sciences company, we have discovered a unique pipeline of small molecules with the potential to address major health problems, including tigilanol tiglate with anticancer activity against a range of solid tumours, EBC-1013 treating chronic & acute wounds & burns, & programs in antibiotics & anti-inflammatories.

In recognition of our company’s progress over the past 25 years, QBiotics is proudly serving as Program Partner of the WSFB Unseen Worlds installation, featuring an impressive, experiential & dynamic display of Queensland’s scientific wonders. Through the lens of visual projections, WSFB attendees will gain insight into our QBiotics’ approach to drug discovery & development.

According to QBiotics CEO & Managing Director, Mr Stephen Doyle, Brisbane, we are thrilled to be participating in the Unseen Worlds exhibition, showcasing the innovation of QBiotics’ proprietary discovery platform, EcoLogic™.¹

“For 25 years, QBiotics has seamlessly connected scientific discovery, development & commercialisation, leveraging our EcoLogic™ platform, to harness the power of nature, & identify small molecules with the greatest potential for pharmaceutical advancement.

“This platform has enabled us to utilise nature’s abundant & remarkable chemical diversity, unmatched by synthetic chemistry, & to provide greater opportunity for the discovery of novel molecular structures & new modes of action,” said Mr Doyle.

EcoLogic™ is a knowledge-driven approach that targets plant material with specific biological activity. Rooted in an understanding of ecological systems, & informed by observations of plant-animal interactions in megadiverse environments, EcoLogic™ has enabled QBiotics to discover novel, small molecules with the potential as pharmaceuticals, to address unmet medical needs.

In 2000, our two company founders, Dr. Victoria Gordon, a microbiologist, QBiotics CEO & Managing Director for 23 years, & now Non-Executive Director, & Dr. Paul Reddell, a forest ecologist, QBiotics Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), & Executive Director, began exploring biologically active systems in plant defence. Drawing on their extensive knowledge of natural systems, they combined these insights to establish EcoLogic™.

For a quarter of a century, we have explored nature’s rich reservoir of bioactive molecules, gaining an in-depth understanding of the natural world, & uncovering solutions for unmet medical needs,” Dr. Gordon said.

A prime example of this is our anticancer drug, tigilanol tiglate, which uniquely demonstrates efficacy against a broad range of solid tumours.^{2, 3} We have registered this drug as a veterinary pharmaceutical in Australia, the USA, Europe, & the UK for the treatment of canine mast cell tumours, having now treated more than 30,000 dogs.^{3, 4}

“We are currently in Phase II clinical development for human application, where tigilanol tiglate is showing potential as a safe & efficacious anticancer treatment,”⁵ said Dr. Gordon.

“Our Phase II trials are in head & neck cancer & soft tissue sarcomas, with several other tumour types being treated under Compassionate Use.^{6, 7}

“Tigilanol tiglate’s unique mode of action leads to complete tumour destruction, promotes healing of the site after the tumour sloughs, & has no significant side-effects for the patient.^{2, 3, 5} This multifactorial mode of action stems from the drug’s origin in the seed of the Blushwood tree.^{1, 2} Since tigilanol tiglate originates in a natural system, it has the capacity to function effectively within the complexity of mammalian biology,” Dr. Gordon said.

“Had we relied on conventional, high-throughput screening methods, like those commonly used in pharmaceutical biodiscovery, tigilanol tiglate would likely have been overlooked.

“This underscores the strength of our discovery & development approach, which begins with EcoLogic™, progresses through complex organism phenotypic screening, & is tested in real-world animal diseases within the veterinary setting, before advancing to human clinical development,” said Dr. Gordon.

“While our current clinical focus is on developing treatments for solid tumours & chronic wounds, we also are also looking to the future with our early-stage discovery programmes for new antibiotics & anti-inflammatories,” Dr Reddell said.

“In these programs, we are once again, taking our inspiration from exploring nature’s remarkable chemical diversity, to design, test & develop potential new drugs to tackle challenging diseases.

“Reflecting on the past 25 years, what has been critical to the success of our discovery & development programs, is our talented & remarkable people, both company staff & our long-term research partners like QIMR Berghofer,” said Dr Reddell.

“It is their inquisitiveness, passion for science, willingness to think & solve problems differently, & the energy generated from collaboration, that is the essence of our company, & is the culture that will underpin our future success.”

References

1. Grant EL, Wallace HM, Trueman SJ, Reddell PW, Ogbourne SM. Floral and reproductive biology of the medicinally significant rainforest tree, Fontainea picrosperma (Euphorbiaceae). Industrial Crops and Products. 2017;108:416-22.
2. Cullen JK, Yap P-Y, Ferguson B, Bruce ZC, Koyama M, Handoko H, et al. Tigilanol tiglate is an oncolytic small molecule that induces immunogenic cell death and enhances the response of both target and non-injected tumors to immune checkpoint blockade. Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. 2024;12(4):e006602.
3. De Ridder TR, Campbell JE, Burke-Schwarz C, Clegg D, Elliot EL, Geller S, et al. Randomized controlled clinical study evaluating the efficacy and safety of intratumoral treatment of canine mast cell tumors with tigilanol tiglate (EBC-46). J Vet Intern Med. 2021;35(1):415-29.
4. Musser ML, Jones PD, Goodson TL, Roof E, Johannes CM. Response to tigilanol tiglate in dogs with mast cell tumors. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine. 2024;38(6):3162-9.
5. Bartlett et al. A Pilot Phase II Study to Evaluate the Small Molecule Tigilanol Tiglate in Patients with Advanced Soft Tissue Sarcoma (NCT05755113). ESMO 1736P. 2024.
6. ClinicalTrials.gov. A Clinical Study to Investigate the Efficacy of Intratumoral Tigilanol Tiglate in Soft Tissue Sarcoma, 2025 [Available from: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05755113?intr=tigilanol%20tiglate&rank=3].
7. ClinicalTrials.gov. A Clinical Study to Investigate the Efficacy of Tigilanol Tiglate Directly in Head and Neck Cancer 2025 [Available from: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05608876?intr=tigilanol%20tiglate&rank=2].