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The foundations of a career
Will Knox will always have fateful memories of the Rosedale apartment complex in the Northern Sydney suburb of St Ives, not far from where he grew up on the city’s northern beaches.
There he sat for countless hours during the middle part of his teenage years by the side of his beloved grandmother, Leslie. She had been an active woman, regularly playing bowls and golf into her mid-60’s before she was tragically struck down with thyroid cancer. It gradually moved into her bones and organs.
The family, including Knox's mother (the eldest of six siblings spanning 18 years), his father and two sisters, sold their home and moved into the same complex to be near her.
"It was very tough watching her decline. I saw her go from a very fit and healthy elderly woman to someone who, very gradually over a long period, was whittled away as a human being and had so much of what she could do taken from her,” he says.
"I'd come home from school and do my HSC studies sitting next to her after she'd gone through radiation or chemotherapy. We would sit together and watch daytime TV while I did my work. That was a really interesting part of my early formation in terms of what I wanted to do in my life and career."
Leslie was 73 when she passed away. The experience planted a seed that has grown, three decades later, into one of Australia's most intriguing medical technology stories.
“There was, in the end, a sense of relief that after multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, she didn’t have to endure any more. She was very strong to go through all that, but looking back, that whole experience shaped how I thought about healthcare. It just seemed like it was too long, too difficult, and too painful a process,” he says. "I couldn't help thinking there has to be a better way not just specifically in oncology and cancer, but in healthcare more broadly.”
Commercial vision meets breakthrough science
Today Knox is chief executive of Tetratherix. a company started almost a decade ago by group of young researchers at the University of Sydney, including a PhD chemist named Dr Ali Fathi, who had invented an entirely new polymer material the world had never seen before.
The material could transition from liquid to solid at body temperature, could be manufactured cheaply and scaled, and produced no inflammatory response. It was validated for dental bone regeneration but Knox immediately saw the broader potential of the technology when he joined the firm in 2018.
The firm is now commercialising its Tetratherix biomaterial platform across its four core businesses of bone regeneration, tissue spacing, tissue healing and drug delivery, using the same underlying technology to help repair bone, create temporary protective barriers between tissues and improve healing outcomes across a range of surgical and medical applications.
Knox had gone into medical sciences after school, then combined clinical exposure with a business degree, landing his first job at Cochlear doing marketing and business analysis across Asia Pacific.
A formative early moment came through what Cochlear calls a "turn-on", compulsive viewing for its young staff, where a child has a cochlear implant switched on for the first time.
"These kids can hear their parents' voices for the first time. There's not a dry eye in the entire theatre or centre," Knox says. "That experience was enormously shaping for me because I immediately grasped the impact of the industry. It took me right back to my early thinking around my grandmother."
From Cochlear he moved through roles in Australia and the United States, including a stint at Medtronic, one of the world's largest medical device companies, before returning home and eventually moving into the distribution side of the industry. But he yearned to be in the creative part of the sector.
In 2013, Knox and his business partner Jeff Reed founded uHealth, a regenerative biological company with two central ambitions: the digitisation of the consumer healthcare journey, and regenerative medicine for orthopaedics and cartilage repair. The business was acquired by Device Technologies in 2017.
A year later Knox came into Tetrathrerix as CEO not a scientist himself, but as a commercial and clinical operator who understood how to build businesses around breakthrough science.
Scaling with purpose
He is candid about why the combination with Ali Fathi, now the firm’s Chief Technology Officer," has worked.
“Having seen businesses fail because of a lack of humility or self-awareness from academic founders, I'd say one of the main reasons we've done so well is the relationship Ali and I have. He had the self-awareness to say, 'I don't know all of the commercial and economic sides of running these types of businesses,” he says.
That humility, Knox says, took about 12 months to fully translate into a genuine working partnership, one where the two now operate in deliberate unison.
The addressable market across Tetratherix's three core segments is estimated to be US$10 billion within five years. Knox has set the company a goal of treating 10 million patients with its polymer material as fast as possible, a target he believes could be reached within five years, possibly sooner.
The most immediately exciting programs are in oncology. The company's prostate spacer technology uses the polymer, injected around the prostate, where it transitions from liquid to solid, to push surrounding anatomy away during radiation therapy, allowing a higher dose to be delivered more precisely to the tumour. The result is a shorter treatment protocol: around 30 to 40 days rather than a conventional six-month course.
"We're continuing to evolve the product’s use in areas on drug delivery and oncology which will expand our impact around the world”
Tetratherix raised $25 million at its ASX IPO in June last year and the capital is partly funding an expansion of its Alexandria manufacturing facility in Sydney from 200 square metres to around 3,000 square metres, more than 10 times the footprint, with 50 times the production capacity.
Knox, who holds 6.64 per cent of the company, is measured about what the listed environment changes.
"Becoming a listed company hasn't fundamentally changed how we run the business," he says. "We always thought it would be part of our journey. We're not a business that's been established to be acquired. We want to be the next Cochlear or the next ResMed, a generational listed company."
It all comes back to the people
Knox juggles leading Tetratherix with raising three young boys.
His 11-year-old is autistic, and it has deepened his and his wife's commitment to awareness and advocacy around neurodiversity and the gaps in educational options for autistic children.
Knox thinks his grandmother Leslie would feel “pretty proud” if she could see the difference he is now trying to make to the world of regenerative medicine. He also has a passion for keeping advanced medical manufacturing on Australian shores.
"My mum and dad often talk about all those years we went through that experience and where we've all got to now. Time flies, but it's important to remember how you got where you are. It keeps you grounded,” he says.
Asked what was the biggest learning from his grandmother that carries through to today, he replies instantly: "In the end, everything for me comes back to people.”
"My broad view on life, business and family is that whether you're dealing with a number on a screen, a share price or anything else, it all comes down to an individual and their story.”
About Tetratherix Ltd (ASX:TTX)
Tetratherix Limited engages in biomaterial and regenerative medicine business
in Australia and internationally. The company manufactures and commercialize
medical device in the areas of bone regeneration, tissue spacing, and tissue
healing applications through its Tetramatrix platform technology.
Board and Management
- Emma Cleary, Independent Non-Executive Chair
- Will Knox, Managing Director and CEO
- Dr Ali Fathi, Founder, CTO and Executive Director
- Atlanta Daniel, Non-Independent Non-Executive Director
- Peter Gray, Independent Non-Executive Director
- John Kelly, Independent Non-Executive Director
- Gillian Shea, Independent Non-Executive Director
- Maurizio Vecchione, Independent Non-Executive Director
Disclaimer
Morgans Corporate Limited is Joint Lead Manager to the Placement of Shares for Tetratherix in May 2026 and may receive fees in this regard.
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