Case Study: Altis Biologics: From Labs to Riches?

Entrepreneurship, innovation technology & entrepreneurship, medical technology.

Doctor Nicolaas Duneas was in a quandary: as he sat in his dishevelled office at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), he pondered the future of his company Altis Biologics. Founded in 2002, Altis was a small biotechnology company specialising in bone regeneration. Duneas was a trusted expert in his field, and Altis represented his life’s work. Now, in July 2009, the company was poised in a kind of no-man’s land. Duneas still needed to complete one more set of clinical trials before he could take his product to market, and for that he needed significant capital. Feeling like a very small fish in the big pond of global pharmaceuticals, Duneas wondered just how he was going to find the right funding and strategic partners to expand his business. Was he right to launch his product locally first? And was he being too ambitious by setting his sights on the overseas market