CSIRO hopes to cash in on image analysis boom

The image analysis group at Australia's national research organisation, CSIRO, claims the nation's unique research history is about to land it a massive export windfall.

Spruiking a new deal with US/Australian biotech instrument maker Axon, the group also announced that it was already working on the "next major step" in drug discovery, spectroscopy image analysis.

"There are many makers already looking at image analysis using fluorescence on live cells, but the problem is that whilst tracking one change, that change can be affecting another aspect of the cell metabolism," said Leanne Bischof, leader of CSIRO's image analysis group.

"At the moment, the drug discovery companies can only run a few assays such as for death and replication, and have to do them sequentially due to the limitations [of the microscopy]. Moving to spectroscopy means they can assess a compound's effect across a range of cell areas which is much more useful in measuring interrelated changes brought on by a compound," she said.

CSIRO has developed a considerable store of expertise in the field of highly specialised spectroscopy image analysis thanks to years of development work for the mineral industry -- something which although different in requirement to the biotech market has very similar ground rules.

"We have spent the last 10 to 15 years working with the mining industry, building up expertise in spectroscopy image analysis. We are already working on the next big one, a new phase of image analysis for a major overseas company. It means we are perfectly primed to move into this new industry."

Bischof's team will apply image analysis to biological spectroscopy which will allow real time tracking of changes across a vastly greater number of cell components than existing fluorescence based imaging techniques.

"At the moment the [drug discovery] people are looking at four or five different aspects of change in the cell as a result of the compounds being tested," she said.

"But using spectroscopy images, we will be able to boost this to as much as 60 channels of information, which will obviously be much more effective and enable the drug companies to work much faster," she asserted. "This is a very exciting market and we believe it will get much bigger."

The Aussie advantage

CSIRO's deal with Axon, described by Bischof as "worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over a couple of years", took two years' hard work by the image analysis group.

The CSIRO software will be used in drug discovery for neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury, using microwell image analysis for trial compounds.

"This was a major undertaking for us, and we got it because people around the world are starting to recognise we can do just as good a job as anybody anywhere -- if not better -- but we can do it more cost-effectively," she said.

Bischof added that her team was already talking to other instrument makers, and said she was optimistic that other major companies would start "beating a path to our door" for similar image analysis software.

"With the communications capability we have we don't have to live in Silicon Valley or next door to a company. We can work 24-7, and in some ways you could argue it is a more effective way to develop software because of the time shift allowing continuous development and assessment [from North America]," she said.