New instrument for Bio21

Melbourne's Bio21 precinct at the University of Melbourne received a boost today with the announcement that the Victorian State government would provide $AUD5.7 million towards the cost of purchasing an 800-megahertz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer.

The new instrument is the keystone of a $15 million NMR Centre being built as part of the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute (Bio21 Institute).

Announcing the funding, Innovation Minister John Brumby said that the facility would strengthen Victoria's international reputation as a centre for biomedical research.

According to Prof Dick Wettenhall, director of the Bio21 Institute, the NMR Centre will house seven of the nine spectrometers available to Bio21 researchers, and will primarily be focused on the use of NMR spectroscopy for protein structure determination and rational drug design.

"NMR has been regarded as a key technology from the outset of planning Bio21. It will provide us with a capability we didn't have before," Wettenhall noted.

In addition, he said, the NMR facility would complement the X-ray crystallography technology being made available by the Australian National Synchrotron, currently under construction near Monash University.

The new NMR would be the most powerful NMR instrument in Australia, providing increased sensitivity and resolution and faster analysis, Wettenhall said.

Ordered in December, the complex instrument will take 15 months to build and test, and will be installed in a specially prepared 'cave' in the Bio21 Institute, where it will be shielded from external electromagnetic radiation.

With the new Institute buildings scheduled for completion in March 2004, the NMR Centre should be ready to go from day one, he said.

Wettenhall said that Bio21 was now progressing smoothly since last year's "hiccup," which saw a major corporate restructuring of the project.

"A lot of individual investments made last year are starting to connect up," he said.

David Penington, chairman of Bio21 Australia, said that the precinct was in the process of signing up a number of institutes as full members, including the Howard Florey Institute, the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and others. In addition, he noted that three leading hospitals, as well as a CSIRO division and the Victorian College of Pharmacy were interested in becoming involved with the precinct.