Posted 29 October 2020
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This story was submitted by CEO Catherine Osborne PhD GAICD.
It has a been a big 12 months for Crux Biolabs.
This time last year our team consisted of 4 full-time biologists and me. We now have a Chief Operating Officer to help me run the business and just this month we’ve hired 2 new full-time scientists. Based on our pipeline of work we may be hiring another one or two more immunologists before the end of the year!
There have definitely been some stressful times during 2020. Probably the two most stressful times have been the start of both Victorian waves, when case numbers were rising and everyone was second-guessing the timing and severity of any lockdown. Since we conduct clinical and pre-clinical research, including for some anti-viral products, we were able to stay open throughout the Melbourne lockdowns, with a very strict Covid-safe contingency plan, but back in March it wasn’t clear how our operations would be affected.
Crux Biolabs staff on moving day (supplied)
A pleasant surprise for us was actually lots of new work coming our way during the initial lockdown, because of our expertise is cellular immunology and biomarker detection. This triggered the search for a larger labspace because we were at capacity with the staff-per-square-metre restrictions in our original Scoresby lab. Finding a larger lab, still in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, basically already at PC2-level and 4 times larger than our previous lab has been fantastic. But the decision to move became quite stressful in July as moving day crept closer and Melbourne’s second wave of case number kept increasing. We ended up moving all of our equipment to the new Bayswater lab on 22nd July, just the day before masks became mandatory in the Melbourne metro area.
I’m so proud of the whole Crux team. We’ve been able to complete some great immunology research for our local clients during times of great uncertainty, and we are now doing interesting immunology research for international clients too (US and Indonesia). We have been going so well in fact that our revenue for the financial year was double last year’s (118% increase to be precise) and we had our first consecutively profitable quarters.
Find out more about Crux Biolabs.
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