Our Company

REX Ortho Pty Ltd is an orthopaedic development company focused on a portfolio of innovative orthopaedic products utilising the REX Screw technology.

Founded in 2017, the company was established after a team of surgeons and biomedical engineering researchers from Curtin University developed a removable, expandable orthopaedic screw (REX Screw) to increase screw fixation strength, especially in osteoporotic bone and address unmet clinical needs across orthopaedics. The first indication for the technology that has been developed is the F-REX Screw for proximal femoral fractures and the second indication currently under development is the L-REX Screw for the lumbar spine.

Our Board

Ian Brown

Executive Chair

Ian is a successful entrepreneur with global commercial experience across multiple industries. He has taken various early-stage science and technology projects and new business model projects and created successful businesses.

Ian is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD and a Facilitator of the CSIRO ON Accelerate program. He has an MBA and is a Fellow of the AICD. He currently serves as an Executive Director and as a Non-Executive Director of several Australian and Singaporean university and government spinout Healthcare, MedTech and AgTech companies (Market Cap $4M to $40M) including: OxiDx Pty Ltd, Respiradigm Pty Ltd, REX Ortho Pty Ltd and Biolidics Ltd.

Ian has lived and worked in London, Milan, Gothenburg, Melbourne and Perth and has worked on significant projects in the USA, Asia and Japan.

Lucas Kong

Non-Executive Director

As the director of UOA (Australia) and Kong Clan Group (KCG), Lucas manages investments into pre-seed/early-stage companies through to IPO stage. He actively seeks founders to deploy patient capital, supporting the development of companies through capital and strategic management. It is in this role that he supports REX Ortho as a non-executive director.

Alex McHenry

Non-Executive Director

Alex has over 17 years of experience in corporate advisory and management consulting with a specific focus on the implementation of corporate transaction and business transformation initiatives for private and public organisations. Alex is currently the COO of Orthocell Ltd, a world leading regenerative medicine company, dedicated to providing innovative treatments for people suffering from tendon, cartilage and soft tissue injuries.

Alex is also a director of AKMC Consulting and prior to joining Orthocell Ltd provided corporate advisory and management consulting services to clients within the bio therapeutic, junior exploration, mining and mining services industry. Alex assisted with numerous acquisitions and divestments, capital raises, public company administration and promotion.

Rohan McDougall

Non-Executive Director

Rohan has been the Director of Commercialisation at Curtin University since 2008. His career has focused on the translation of research based technology into new products and services through establishment of technology transfer partnerships and technology based companies. He has worked in both commercial start-up environments and in institutional technology transfer roles, with 10+ years experience as a company director and chairman of technology start-ups. He has cofounded a number of innovation community events including Univation, the OzAPP Awards, West Tech Fest and KCA National Accelerator Demo Day.

Richard Hopkins

Non-Executive Director

Dr Richard Hopkins is an experienced bio-pharmaceutical executive with over 20 years in corporate leadership roles with public biotechnology companies. He has an established track record in drug development of novel therapies with a particular focus in oncology and medicinal cannabis, corporate strategy and financing, business development and intellectual property.

He recently served as the Managing Director ex-USA for Zelira Therapeutics; a leading global company focused on clinical validation of medical cannabis. Prior to this, Dr Hopkins served as Chief Executive Officer at PharmAust where he oversaw clinical development of a novel cancer therapy for dogs and humans.

During his career, Dr. Hopkins and managed and overseen strategic alliances and licensing deals with multiple global pharmaceutical partners including J&J, Pfizer, Roche, Genentech, AstraZeneca/Medimmune. Dr Hopkins is an author on over 30 peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on 15 patents and patent applications.

Management

Ian Brown

Chief Executive Officer

Ian is a successful entrepreneur with global commercial experience across multiple industries. He has taken various early-stage science and technology projects and new business model projects and created successful businesses.

Ian is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD and a Facilitator of the CSIRO ON Accelerate program. He has an MBA and is a Fellow of the AICD. He currently serves as an Executive Director and as a Non-Executive Director of several Australian and Singaporean university and government spinout Healthcare, MedTech and AgTech companies (Market Cap $4M to $40M) including: OxiDx Pty Ltd, Respiradigm Pty Ltd, REX Ortho Pty Ltd and Biolidics Ltd.

Ian has lived and worked in London, Milan, Gothenburg, Melbourne and Perth and has worked on significant projects in the USA, Asia and Japan.

Philip Procter

Head of Business Development

Philip has 35 years’ experience and proven success in research, development, marketing and business development of Orthopaedic medical devices, gained in a multidisciplinary international environment. Since 2012 he has worked as a self-employed industry consultant mentoring SMEs in the medical device sector. He co-founded two SME’s one of which, Biomimetic Innovations Ltd based in Ireland, is currently commercialising OsStic^® bone adhesive technology together with two multinational implant companies.

He has project management experience in high profile Trauma, CMF, Spinal and Orthopaedic projects and in developing and commercialising innovative biomaterials that augmented fixation of implants in poor quality bone.

Since 2014, as part time adjunct Professor, he has been directing applied biomaterials research in the Applied Materials Science department of Professor Håkan Engqvist at Angstrom Laboratories University of Uppsala Sweden.

Intan Oldakowska

Chief Scientific Officer

Intan is a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur focused on developing medical devices. She is a research associate at Curtin. In her research she collaborates with orthopaedic surgeons, neurosurgeons and other researchers to design and develop innovative medical devices that solve unmet clinical problems and have commercial potential. She is a named inventor on four patents. She has received a number of awards including the overall winner for the 2018 Curtinnovation Award for her original REX Screw Project. She is also a co-founder and CEO of Cervical ChinUp which distributes a novel neck support device to help manage neck pain. Alongside working in her medtech start-ups, she teaches the next generation of medtech entrepreneurs on how to innovate in this space as the co-director of Perth Biodesign and Biodesign Australia.

Matt Oldakowski

Chief Technical Officer

Dr Matt Oldakowski is a medical device entrepreneur, biomedical engineering researcher and medtech innovation educator. Matt is the Founder and CTO for two medical device companies. REX Ortho is developing an expandable orthopedic screw to reduce screw fixation failure and prevent revision surgeries and Earflo is developing a non-invasive device to treat chronic ear infections and avoid grommet surgeries. Previously Matt was the Founder of ChinUp, which currently markets a neck brace alternative, that is specially designed for specific neck injuries.

In 2018 Matt was a Global Faculty Training Fellow at Stanford Biodesign. Based on this experience Matt founded Perth Biodesign where he mentors, educates and supports multidisciplinary teams of clinicians, engineers, researchers and business people to identify an unmet clinical need, invent a solution and implement a business to commericalise the technology. Matt is also the Director of Biodesign Australia, 2022 Conference Chair for the Biomedical Engineering Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Alliance, a steering committee member and an industry mentor for the BridgeTech and Australian Clinical Entrepreneur programs, respectively.

Advisors