Biotechs benefit from ARC grant round

Several Australian biotechs, including Novogen, Proteome Systems, Starpharma and Ventracor, were winners in the second round of Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage grants, announced earlier this month.

Other life science organisations also featured, including pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Aventis.

The grants support the development of research alliances between universities, research institutes and industry, and are funded through the federal government's $8.3 billion ten-year program Backing Australia's Ability. Linkage grants were given to support the research companies including:

• Ventracor (ASX:VCR), two grants, $787,000 and $440,000: Clinical research and product development work to be undertaken with the University of NSW and the University of Technology, Sydney.
• Novogen (ASX:NRT), $240,000: Screen new isoflavanoid compounds for their ability to modulate immune response, leading to possible autoimmune therapeutics.
• Starpharma (ASX:SPL), $440,000: Further develop pharmaceutical applications of its proprietary dendrimer macromolecules.

• Other grants were awarded for Stem Cell Sciences' work isolating neurons from embryonic stem cells, for Proteome Systems' osteoarthritis diagnostic research, for research by Cyclotek into new imaging agents for neuronal nicotinic receptors and for high-throughput genetic screening research being conducted by Corbett Research.

  Pharmaceutical companies Aventis and AstraZeneca will work with University of NSW and University of Wollongong researchers on novel human tryptases and lipodomics respectively under the grant scheme.

  Akzo Nobel, Qiagen and Copyrat also received linkage grant funding.

  Novogen researchers delve deeper

  Researchers at Novogen -- which will contribute $75,000 over three years to the isoflavanoid project -- will work with longtime collaborator Dr Vivien Reeve of the faculty of Veterinary Science at Sydney University to prepare new analogues of isoflavone metabolites as potential candidates.

  "We're looking at screening some of our drug candidate compounds for activity against animal models of human disease," said Novogen research director Alan Husband. "Our pipeline is continually generating new isoflavanoids. We've now generated about 140 compounds and continue to produce more.

  "We have early indications that some are able to modify the activity of the immune system. We're moving to a new area of modulating immune response and [looking at] how that might influence autoimmune diseases. Specifically, these include systemic lupus erythematosus, autoimmune cardiomyopathy and autoimmune glomerular nephritis. "At the first instance we will look at whether we can switch off autoimmunity in mouse models. From that we'll be short-listing lead compounds."