Guy Healy | April 09, 2008
THE future of the country's largest stem cell research effort hangs on a review of the Australian Stem Cell Centre, which has begun an expansion from Melbourne into Brisbane.
The first embryonic stem cell production facility in Queensland opened at the University of Queensland's St Lucia campus last week under the auspices of the ASCC. The centre includes the universities of Queensland, Melbourne, Adelaide and NSW, Monash University and five medical research institutes.
Vicki Sara, who chairs the ASCC, said the centre had reached the stage where it had a "focused therapeutic program moving rapidly into the clinic".
"We have developed a strong and rapidly developing intellectual property portfolio, and the centre's Queensland node will provide our best researchers with world-class laboratory capabilities," she said.
The ASCC has funding until 2011 but estimates it will need support until 2018 to realise its ambitions.
The typical research and development life cycle for applications of research is five to 15 years.
Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr, who visited the new Queensland node last week, said he was required by law to undertake a review of the centre.
He told the HES he had appointed a steering committee to ensure the "the best possible outcome" for an outstanding element of the country's biotechnology effort.
ASCC chief executive Stephen Livesey said the Brisbane life-science precinct, which could be home to some of the research hubs promised by Senator Carr, exerted a "significant pull", attracting outstanding scientists.
Taken together, the Australian Institute of Biotechnology and Nanotechnology, the Institute of Molecular Bioscience, the Queensland Brain Institute and the Mater Medical Research Institute offered "a world-class and novel infrastructure capability necessary for the stem cell field", Professor Livesey said.
ASCC chief scientific officer Melissa Little told the HES the centre had an ambitious program to develop medical devices in haematology.
Professor Little said the R&D thrust was to make white blood cells for chemotherapy patients, use stem cell technology to improve bone marrow transplants, and get human embryonic stem cells to make red and white blood cells and clotting agents.
There was an urgent worldwide demand for a safe, limitless and transfusable supply of blood, shesaid.
Behind this demand was the spread of AIDS to 45 million people in Asia as a result of a lack of transfusion screening and the imperative for the US Government to supply its soldiers with blood on battlefields.