Another medical first for Queensland
Queensland will be home to Australia’s first Translational Research Institute, a ‘one stop shop’ for medical marvels.
2006 Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer has long envisaged Queensland having a facility which could enable Australian researchers to take their discoveries all the way from late pre-clinical development to the completion of Phase Two clinical trials.
Thanks to $200 million in funding from the Queensland and Australian Governments, that vision will become a reality with the Translational Research Institute due to open in Brisbane in early 2010. Professor Ian Frazer, who developed Gardasil, the world’s first vaccine against cervical cancer, said that up to now, Australia has lacked the capacity to translate medical research into practical marketable treatments which meet the standards of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
"Had Australia possessed such a translational organisation to develop Gardasil to market stage, the country would have earned up to $300 million a year more from earnings on intellectual capital," Professor Frazer said.
"That’s because local companies and institutions involved in the trials would have been entitled to about 30 per cent of estimated annual sales revenue of up to $1 billion a year," he said.
The $100 million each from the Queensland and Australian Governments will support the establishment of the centre, but Professor Frazer hopes to raise further funds from philanthropists and medical and academic organisations.
"Therapeutic product development is most effectively and efficiently undertaken by clustering people with the relevant skill sets in a single location, and in facilities constructed with all necessary infrastructure for undertaking evaluation of therapeutics in a preclinical and clinical setting," Professor Frazer said.
"We have all the talent here and we have the small biotech companies here – if we’re producing the products through to the stage where they’re of great value to pharmaceutical giants, we’ll get a lot more back into the country as a return for that," he said.
The Translational Research Institute (TRI) will combine the existing strengths in translational health research of the Princess Alexandra Hospital, The University of Queensland’s Diamantina Institute for Translational Research, Queensland University of Technology and the Mater Medical Research Institute (MMRI).
Director of MMRI Professor Derek Hart said TRI would provide an unprecedented boost to the search for a cure for cancer and other diseases.
"For the first time in the southern hemisphere, we will have access to a facility that will be a ‘one stop shop’ for all phases of medical research and health care innovation, from discovery, to clinical trials, and finally the manufacture of new biopharmaceuticals," Professor Hart said.
"This new facility will enable our worldfirst prostate cancer vaccine, as well as similar vaccines we are working on for leukaemia, breast cancer and multiple myeloma to be tested and manufactured here in Brisbane," he said.
"This new centre will be one of only a handful in the world with this capacity not dedicated to a single commercial entity’s needs," he said.
Website: http://www.di.uq.edu.au
Last reviewed 23 July 2007