Dr Russell Tait
Dr Russell Tait is the Chief Executive Officer and a Director of PolyActiva Pty Ltd, a company he founded in 2010.
PolyActiva is a Melbourne based clinical stage ophthalmology company that develops ocular implants that substitute for daily drop therapy.
He has led the company through a number of funding rounds and seen it transition over the last 10 years from a Research and Development (R&D) enterprise into a clinical development company able to make its own clinical trial supply.
Dr Tait is a serial innovator being an inventor for more than 15 patent families and is co-inventor of PolyActiva’s technology.
Dr Tait has more than 20 years’ experience in drug delivery and pharmaceutical product development with leading pharmaceutical companies, including Glaxo Australia and Faulding (now Hospira). He also spent time working with Australia leading science agency, CSIRO.
Whilst at CSIRO, he was the recipient of the CSIRO medal for Business Excellence for publication of the Total Well Being Diet.
Dr Tait has extensive experience in early-stage development of medicines, in particular sterile medicines and ocular products. He has led large R&D teams through the extensive development process for a pharmaceutical product from product inception, through nonclinical studies, clinical studies and regulatory interactions with global health authorities.
He also has extensive intellectual property management experience and business development experience, including negotiation of major license deals and collaboration agreements.
Dr Tait holds both a Bachelor of Pharmacy and a Master of Pharmacy degree from the former Victorian College Pharmacy and a Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry from Deakin University. On completion of his Doctor of Philosophy, he took a post-doctoral position at Kansas University where he worked for three years. He also completed a Master of Business Administration (AGSM) with UNSW during the middle of his career.
Presently an Adjunct Associate Lecturer at Monash University in the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dr Tait is broadly published in drug delivery and the development of polymer prodrugs.
He is a registered pharmacist and still practices part-time in retail pharmacy to maintain his connection with the pharmacy profession.