Posted: 10 June 2025
The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) committed $27 million to PolyActiva as part of its $40 million Series C round. PolyActiva, a Melbourne-based biotechnology company, was developing a potentially revolutionary eye implant technology to treat glaucoma.
This investment supported cutting-edge Australian research with the potential to transform treatment outcomes for millions living with glaucoma worldwide. The funding enabled PolyActiva to expand and consolidate its operations into a single facility encompassing R&D, analytics, and manufacturing, grow its highly skilled workforce, and complete its phase 2b clinical trial.
NRFC CEO David Gall stated, “There were currently more than 80 million people worldwide suffering from glaucoma, and this number was expected to increase to over 111 million people by 2040. PolyActiva’s ground-breaking technology was being developed with the hope, in the future, to provide those facing this debilitating disease with an alternative treatment regime that would vastly improve their quality of life while reducing the treatment burden on medical providers.”
Glaucoma, a chronic, progressive eye disease, could lead to irreversible blindness by damaging the optic nerve due to increased eye pressure. Less than 50% of glaucoma patients consistently used daily eye drops over time, leading to an increased risk of vision loss.
PolyActiva’s Prezia technology emerged from research conducted at the CSIRO, Bionics Institute, and Centre for Eye Research Australia. This exhibited the potential of Australian medical innovation and its ability to improve the lives of millions of people around the world.
Prezia enabled precise, consistent, customizable, and effective delivery of ocular therapies for glaucoma and other eye diseases.
“The NRFC’s investment in PolyActiva allowed the company to expand its highly skilled workforce to support local manufacturing of its drug delivery technology. PolyActiva’s implant technology had unique manufacturing requirements, so this investment helped to develop local capability and diversity in the pharmaceutical value chain, providing cascading benefits for Australia’s research, innovation, and commercialization ecosystem,” Mr. Gall said.
In addition to its treatment for glaucoma, PolyActiva had the potential to deliver a variety of other intra-ocular treatments, including the antibiotic levofloxacin. If successful, the treatment could reduce the risk of infection for patients that had recently undergone cataract surgery, eliminating the need for peri-operative treatment and post-operation eye drops.
The NRFC’s investment was made alongside Brandon Capital, Australia’s leading biotech venture capital firm, and came as PolyActiva expanded its commercial presence in the United States.
PolyActiva’s Australian CEO Vanessa Waddell said, “Inspired by Cochlear’s journey that leveraged Australian research to restore hearing to millions, PolyActiva was on its mission to reduce glaucoma-related vision loss globally. This investment by the NRFC would help us do that, ensuring that we could complete our phase 2b clinical trial and prepare for phase 3 registration trial, which would take us one step closer to a potential new therapy for glaucoma.”
NRFC Chief Investment Officer Dr. Mary Manning said, “The NRFC’s cornerstone investment in PolyActiva would anchor the company’s current funding round alongside Brandon Capital, helping to crowd-in the additional funding that it needed. This was a great example of Australian innovation becoming a real-world solution that could improve millions of lives. The NRFC was proud to back PolyActiva and support the development of this breakthrough technology here at home.”
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