BIO 2008: Bananabenders go from bricks to brains

The Queensland Government has launched a new fellowships program for life science researchers worth $43 million over three years.

The fellowships are aimed at postdoctoral researchers and research teams who are not yet ready to apply for an NHMRC grant.

Launching the program at BIO 2008 in San Diego today, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said the program was part of the Government's plan to move government investment "from bricks to brains".

"We started with a strategy which said 'if we build it they will come' and we've put a lot of investment into facilities," Bligh said.

"In the last 10 years we've contributed to the development of 36 new research institutes, many of which involve brand new buildings, and while we'll still be investing in that infrastructure, we are going to be moving the investment from bricks to brains."

Bligh said that while the eligibility guidelines had yet to be finalised, the program would involve three different fellowships, ranging from 12 months' salary for one person to $850,000 for a team over three years.

"This will be the most comprehensive and generous research fellowship program in Australia," she said.

"We hope that this program will bring people from around the world and from around the country. That will give us the capacity to keep our best and brightest, and give them opportunities that they might have otherwise missed.

"It is very much about identifying the missing link in our chain."

She also announced a range of new initiatives for the wider life sciences and biotechnology sector under the Smart State III program, including $3 million for the Princess Alexandria Hospital in Brisbane to buy scientific and analytical equipment for its molecular and clinical pathology laboratory.

Just over $900,000 has been granted to Brisbane biotech Biochip Innovations, which is developing primers for PCR-based biochips called PrimRset, one of which is aimed at influenza type A and another to detect flaviviruses such as dengue fever and West Nile virus.

The University of Queensland will get $800,000 to develop MRI biomarkers to aid accurate and early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The university will use MRI to monitor the accumulation of particular oligomers that are precursors to the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

There is another $1.25 million on offer for the PA Hospital for its Head and Neck Cancer Centre of Excellence for the Asia-Pacific: $1.4 million to UQ for biofuel from sugar cane research; and $2 million to QUT as part of a $15 million project to establish an Australia-Canada prostate cancer research alliance.

Queensland and the US state of Washington are also furthering an agreement signed by Bligh and Washington governor Christine Gregoire in 2006.

Queensland has granted $650,000 towards a joint research project - the molecular diagnostics platform with electronic readout of nano-barcodes - between the University of Queensland and the University of Washington to more accurately improve the diagnosis of malaria and dengue fever.

"There is a very powerful alliance developing between those two universities in those tropical diseases," Bligh said.