AAMRI calls for government to spur biotech commercialisation

The government has a significant role to play in helping Australia’s world class medical research be translated into genuine health and economic benefits, says the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI).

According to the AAMRI, biotechnology companies currently struggle to secure funding in the crucial period between making a discovery and developing that discovery into something that can attract funding from private investors to drive it through the commercialisation process.

This represents a funding ‘valley of death’ where Australian companies suffer a dearth of funding to prove that an innovation is potentially marketable, thus attracting private investment to drive it through the expensive regulatory hurdles to have it approved for sale.

The problem is that pure research is provided with abundant funding from the government bodies, the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), but these bodies don’t go on to fund the commercialisation of this research.

“Australia produces three per cent of the world’s medical research publications from just 1.1 per cent of global expenditure,” said AAMRI President, Professor Julie Campbell.

“In stark contrast, we rank twentieth and account for less that 0.8 per cent of the world’s triadic patents, a key international measure of commercialisation success.

“This represents hundreds to thousands of wasted inventions each year, and means as a nation we are missing out on the health and financial benefits of the government’s substantial investment in health and medical research.”

In a submission to the ongoing Federal Government’s Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research (AKA the ‘McKeon Review’), the AAMRI has outlined the challenges to commercialising medical discoveries and proposes five initiatives that could boost commercialisation of medical innovations in this country.

The first is for the government to provide ‘proof-of-concept’ funds to ten research precincts that will allow the demonstration of a product concept and fund the securing of IP.

The second is to reduce the number of commercialisation outfits in the country, consolidating the talent and expertise into a smaller number of units.

The third is to create two seed funds to take products from the proof-of-concept phase through to securing private investment. These seed funds would operate along the lines of the existing Medical Research Commercialisation Fund, run by a collaboration of Australian medical research institutes, and Uniseed, which is run by three universities and AustralianSuper.

These funds would leverage venture capital and lower the risk of investment in commercialising new medical innovations.

The fourth recommendation is to place more emphasis on commercial success in all NHMRC grant and fellowship schemes. Presently the schemes focus on academic output and peer-reviewed publications but don’t recognise commercial achievement.

Finally, the AAMRI calls for the government to streamline and optimise regulation to provide a positive environment for commercialisation. This includes adopting the recommendations from last year’s Clinical Trials Action Group report.

“By better targeting government support programs and by facilitating, measuring and rewarding commercial success in the academic research environment, we can leverage commercial investment in medical research and make a real difference to patient outcomes and Australia’s biotech industry,” said Campbell.

“That makes real sense for researchers, industry, government and the community.”

The McKeon Review was commissioned by the federal government in 2011, and is tasked with reviewing Australia’s health and medical research plan. It is expected to report late this year.

Submissions to the review can be read here.