End of Beginning
EDITORIAL | ISSUE TWELVE | NOSTALGIA
Written by AUT Ventures | @aut_ventures
There’s something sweetly nostalgic about looking back at an old project or idea once you know how it ends up panning out. The moments that probably felt completely ordinary at the time – another day in the lab, another round of testing, another conversation about what could come next – suddenly become part of an origin story.
For AUT Ventures, medtech company RespirAq is one of those stories. What began as university research would go on to become one of AUT Ventures’ biggest spin-off successes – opening the door to what might come next for commercialisation at AUT.
Rewind just over 10 years and none of that was guaranteed. Long before anyone knew where the idea might lead, RespirAq’s story began much closer to home: with a PhD student at AUT, her supervisor and a longstanding healthcare problem they believed could be approached differently.
Before RespirAq was RespirAq
To start at the beginning, we need to go back to 2014, when Dr Sandra Grau-Bartual began her PhD in biomedical engineering at AUT. Working under the supervision of Professor Ahmed Al-Jumaily at AUT’s Institute of Biomedical Technologies, Sandra explored a longstanding problem in artificial ventilation. Patients need the air they breathe to be humidified, but conventional systems rely on external water supplies that can create condensation inside breathing circuits.
Her chemical engineering background led her to approach the problem differently, adapting a smart material to this application that could capture moisture as a patient exhales and release it again as they inhale. It was here that the concept behind RespirAq was born, with the idea showing enough promise that AUT Ventures helped secure its first patent in 2017.
Sandra stayed at AUT as a research fellow after completing her PhD, continuing to develop what would eventually become RespirAq’s Active Humidifier – a compact device offering a fundamentally new approach to respiratory humidification.
A first for AUT Ventures
As the technology developed, the question began to shift from whether it could work to how far it could go. Ongoing support from KiwiNet, AUT, AUT Ventures and MBIE helped the team keep pushing the idea forward, while growing interest from outside the university suggested that others could see its potential too.
RespirAq eventually launched as a spin-off in 2021, raising an oversubscribed $1.5 million seed round. At the time, it was the largest investment ever made into an AUT-born technology.
For AUT Ventures, the milestone helped shape what came next. RespirAq had made the leap from university research to a company attracting serious external investment, setting a new benchmark for what commercialisation at AUT could achieve.
It’s a chapter Venture Director Chris Hill views particularly fondly.
“RespirAq showed what was possible. Seeing a technology developed at AUT become a company and attract that level of investment has given us something to build from. A lot has changed since then – our pipeline has expanded, our ambitions have grown and we’re supporting more ideas towards commercialisation – but RespirAq will always be a special part of where that journey began.”
So, what happened next?
RespirAq’s story didn’t stop once it left AUT. Its Active Humidifier received FDA Breakthrough Device designation in 2023, and the team is continuing to work through the wider FDA regulatory process as it moves towards bringing the technology to patients. The company has also raised a further $3 million in funding led by Kiwi venture capital firm Movac’s Emerge Fund 4, helping RespirAq scale up its manufacturing operations.
AUT Ventures remains part of RespirAq’s journey, while back at AUT, the commercialisation pipeline has continued to expand, with more ventures now following in its footsteps.
That’s where the nostalgia gets interesting. We know what became of those early days of RespirAq, but we don’t know which of the ideas taking shape at AUT today we might be looking back on years from now. Perhaps another origin story has already begun.
RespirAq may have marked the end of one beginning, but for AUT Ventures, it helped open the door to what could come next.
Comments