Transforming technology

Although small by global standards, the nanotech scene in Australia is growing with new companies forming and R&D in nanotech already producing products that are being applied to industry, with more in the pipeline.

According to a report prepared for the Prime Minister's Science Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) in March this year, more than 30 Australian nanotechnology-based firms have been born over the last five years, with applications in new materials and particles, medical and pharmaceutical devices and processes, environmental and agricultural filters and sensors, and miniature batteries and capacitors.

The report predicts that nanotechnology will mature over the next decade producing "disruptive innovations" that "could be as significant as electricity or the microchip" through the transformation of current technologies, for example in manufacturing, healthcare, electronics and communications.

Nanotechnology is classified by the size of the materials it employs. It involves research and engineering at the molecular level, or in the scale of 1 to 100 nanometres -- a scale that includes the biological molecules DNA, RNA, and proteins.

Nanotechnology is likely to make huge differences in some areas of the life sciences, such as drug delivery -- not only does the small size of nanoparticles enable easier drug delivery, such as absorption by the skin, it also enables less reagent to be given to an individual, potentially reducing drug side-effects. It can also enable more targeted drug delivery.

Regional strengths

Australian nanotechnology currently receives strong support from state governments, although different states have different tactics for tackling this emerging sector.

Nanotechnology Victoria (NanoVic), for example, brings together Monash University, Swinburne University of Technology, RMIT University, and the CSIRO, and has a strong focus on market pull, driving nanotechnology according to industry needs. NanoVic was formed in 2003 through AUD$12 million in funding from the Victorian government's Science Technology and Innovation scheme, matched by member institutes.

"In essence we go out to industry and find out what they need and then look to see if our member institutions have the capability to develop the technology to come up with technology solutions for companies to give them an edge over their competitors," says Dr Bob Irving, who is scientific and commercial director with NanoVic. "In many ways it's a bit of an experiment, and people seem to be quite appreciative of it."

The Queensland state government has a technology push approach, rather than market pull, and funded the establishment of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in 2003, based at the University of Queensland, to focus on developing technologies.

The federal government has made modest investments in nanotech. However, the outcome of the recent PMSEIC report should change this, for example, the report recommends that a national business network be set up to bring those involved in the nanotech industry together and help drive things forward.

Government leadership

Globally, governments in nanotech investment, and significant initiatives have been announced over the last five years. For example the US government's 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act recently provided US$3.7 billion for nanotech research over three years starting in 2005, overtaking Japan in its investment in the sector.

According to the 2005 PMSEIC report, roughly AUD$100 million per year has been invested in Australian nanotech since 2003, more than half of it from government sources. High revenues are predicted to arise from nanotech and, according to the PMSEIC report, global private investment will soon overtake government expenditure.

"About 1500 companies have started up worldwide since 1997 or 1998 with a focus on nanotech or with nanotech as part of their business plan," says Irving. He thinks there may be a glut of new companies coming in this area in the near future.

"A number of Australian companies are currently doing well," says Irving. "Starpharma, for example, in clinical trial phases for delivery of their dendrimer drug technology, such as their vaginal microbicide product. And Advanced Nanotechnology, they are focusing on making nanoparticles, such as transparent metal particles that are used for sunscreening. Psivida are also doing well, they have a drug delivery and biosensor focus, using a biosilicon platform." Advanced Nanotechnology has already won deals with cosmetics giantss Avon, L'Oreal and Revlon for its transparent nanoparticles, which are being used in cosmetics to protect against UV rays.

Bearing fruit

From a commercial perspective, Irving says, NanoVic's efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Member universities are applying their technology in collaboration with companies to develop new products. Biosensor projects in particular, he says, are on track to produce products.

"Some of these developments [in biosensors] are incremental, but the majority will be supplanting current tests," says Irving. "For example, current diagnostic tests for some of the animal diseases take days to months to derive an answer, whereas tests that we are potentially developing here will deliver an answer within hours, or at least on the same day."

Irving believes there is enough investment money at large to get start-ups going, but he doubts whether there's enough money being put in by established companies to support the R&D they need to develop or transform new products.

He will be representing NanoVic at BIO 2005, and has a number of meetings planned with relevant parties with the aim of generating some commercial contacts in the drug delivery and biosensor area. "The market in Australia is quite small, so we need to feed into an international market and you need to know what your competitors are doing," he says.

"The life sciences in Australia are fairly aggressive and successful. Australian life scientists are particularly creative and innovative -- we just need to be a bit smarter about marketing."

Irving sees global opportunities for Australian nanoscience as in two main areas: materials-based nanotech, such as textiles and surfaces, and the life sciences. About two-thirds of Australian nanotech companies are focussed on materials, and one third are working in biotechnology.

"In the life sciences it takes longer to get a product to market due to regulations," Irving says. "Another aspect of this is that a lot of life science research and companies aren't branded as nanotech, yet would probably fall under this category, but have been working at this [molecular] level for some time."

The strength of this 'bionanotech', Irving says, is its ability to join nanotechnology and biotechnology.

"Although we live in this nanotech world, if you like, in a few years time it may not be that nano is an industry because it will become a part of any product or process," he says. "A company will have a product on the market that is superior to someone else's but it won't be superior because it is labelled as being something nano -- it will just be superior. We think of nanotechnology as a tool, or a technology, that will actually make a huge difference -- not actually an industry."

A French connection

A recent visit to France gave NanoVic's Bob Irving a chance to explore first-hand France's national focus on nanotech, and how commercialisation happens.

"In each of the regional centres around France there were major industries that need or are using nanotech," says Irving. "Those industries are driving the innovation and creativity in nanotechnology through institutes in the area, companies and universities are working together."

Irving was also impressed with the French model for spinning out companies. The French equivalent of CSIRO, CNRS [Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique], pays the salaries of the employees or researchers of spin-out company for four years after the company has started operations.

"They give a huge amount of support to these institutional spin-out companies and the companies have a 70 to 80 per cent success rate, which goes against the norm for anywhere else in the world," says Irving. "It's a surprising success rate, but it's because they have that support."

Irving says diagnostic companies are being set up in France to use nanotechnology for providing a platform for using antibodies or other diagnostic reagents for detecting disease.

"The really critical thing is attaching these biological materials onto a platform, which can then be used to measure a reaction. There are five or six different methods that are currently being developed as high-throughput diagnostics that could be used in this way, but nothing has really come to the fore yet."

This technology involves attaching antibodies or other proteins firmly to a surface in the correct orientation, and this requires an appropriately nanostructured surface.

"The materials side of these applications is very important to the life sciences, they go hand in hand with the biologicals," says Irving. "That's the way we are looking at putting our antibodies down onto a chip surface where your antibody is going to stick in the right orientation with its business end uppermost, and where you're not going to get lots of background reactions from the areas of the biochip where there are no reagents," he explains. "So you need surfaces that are going to have very discrete areas where there are functional nanostructures on the surface."

This technology would be used in pathology labs for high-throughput processing of blood samples for disease detection, for example, as well as for use in the field, to give an on site diagnosis of sheep or cattle disease. It could also be used in environmental screening of waterways, for example, or air conditioning systems for the detection of Legionella bacteria. These tests are designed to use little material and they are very fast, which makes them very cheap.

"In Australia, two of the nanotech companies working at the nanotech level around sensors are Ambri, a company specialising in biosensors, and MiniFAB, which focuses on microfluidics and fabrication. I think it is an exciting period for the sensor companies and those of us in nanotechnology who work with these companies or in the area, as we are on the cusp of some leaps forward resulting from the combination of developments in the disciplines and technologies encompassing specific biological reagents, the diagnostic/chip platform hardware surfaces, and the interface chemistries that link them," says Irving.