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Almost from the start of his career, serial entrepreneur Mark Heffernan knew that the business side of biotechnology really excited him. The Australian earned a PhD in pharmacology from Monash University in Melbourne, but the 'business of business' was soon calling to him. "When I finished my PhD, I immediately started working for a biotechnology company - not on the research side, but the management side," he says. "The combination of the two really appealed to me. Translating something into a product has always excited me."

Before long, he moved beyond working for companies to starting some of his own, and he was involved in setting up two publicly traded Australian biotech firms. It was rewarding work for him, but the wider world beckoned. "My wife and I decided in 2003, 'Before we have kids, let's travel,'" he says.

However, he wasn't thinking about going down the "Australians with backpacks" route. On the contrary, his plan was to marry travel and biotechnology; Heffernan wanted to take his entrepreneurial skills someplace completely new. Why? "Australia is very much a happening place for biotech," he acknowledges, "but the cherries have already been picked that were ripe for the picking." He also says Australia has "exhausted its start up model" at this point. Hordes of young companies are vying for attention, and larger bioscience companies are simply licensing intellectual property directly from the universities.

Heffernan began to look for markets where the sector was young, developing, and full of promise. Ireland immediately appealed to him, not the least because, like many Australians, he has Irish ancestry - a grandfather from County Clare. Under Irish citizenship law, Heffernan could claim citizenship through that connection, which eased the process of immigration back to the land of his forefathers.

First, he needed to see if he could find that ripe cherry - a biosciences opportunity within Ireland that could be shaped into a solid company. On his side, he recognized that what he could offer was international entrepreneurial experience in biotechnology. Heffernan searched methodically, meeting with Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Enterprise Ireland, the universities, and specialists in technology transfer, and quickly focused in on a small set of immunologists at Trinity College Dublin (TCD): Luke O'Neill, Kingston Mills, and Dermot Kelleher.

The three researchers had intellectual property that was emerging from their work on regulatory T-cells and Toll-like receptors and held promise for treating and preventing autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. "Serendipity" is how Mills describes the meeting with Heffernan. "Thanks to SFI, we had [become] more aware of protecting our IP and started filing patents, but of course, you have to use your patents. One day this Australian walked in and said 'You should talk to me.' He made a presentation to the three of us, showed us what we could do, and we went on and did it," Mills says. "Luke [O'Neill] and I had talked about setting up a company, but to do it, we really needed a catalyst. Mark was a great catalyst."

Their new company, Opsona, was born from that meeting, and Heffernan set out to secure initial funding. In 2004, he successfully clinched Opsona's first round of €6.25 million ($9.6 million US) in funding from US-based Genentech, Irish-based Seroba BioVentures, and the Nestle-backed Swiss company, Inventages. "We worked so hard, for so long," recalls Heffernan of closing that round. "It also coincided with the birth of my daughter. In the morning I was in the hospital for her birth, and then in the afternoon I was signing the document for the birth of Opsona," he says with a laugh.

In February 2006, Opsona announced collaboration with Wyeth to further develop compounds based on Toll-like receptors, for treating inflammatory diseases. That deal "was definitely the high point" in Heffernan's career to date, he says. "It is a major achievement, a type of deal that hadn't been done in Ireland before."

Seamus O'Hara, a partner in Seroba BioVentures says Heffernan was the right CEO to achieve this type of incremental success for a young start up. "He's very energetic, driven, and dedicated. He also had the technology background and experience of working to develop companies in Australia. That kind of experience is thin on the ground here. We thought he had the right qualities to run a company like Opsona, and that belief has been borne out."

Some of Opsona's compounds have now gone on to clinical trials. If successful, they could be the basis of future drugs for conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as have applications for vaccine and cancer research.

Says Heffernan of his Irish journey: "I feel I've started something here that I want to take through to success."