NHMRC fellowships to spur commercialisation

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has awarded five new Industry Fellowships to encourage researchers to learn more about the commercial aspects of R&D.

The fellowships, totalling $1.6 million over four years, were awarded to researchers who then spend two years working with an industry partner and two in a research institution. They are designed to foster closer interactions between Australian researchers and industry.

The successful fellows will work with industry partners in Australia, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA on research, which includes therapy for ulcers, regulating inflammatory bowel disease, and targeting obesity by manipulating metabolism.

Dr Geoff Dandie of the Child Health Research Institute in Adelaide will team up with industry partner, local company TGR BioSciences, to target inflammatory bowel disease. "We're looking at using some patented bioactive molecules to see if we can eventually cure or prevent aspects of the disease," he said.

Dandie, whose fellowship amounts to $80,000 a year for four years, said that from his point of view it was important to work with a local company, and he already had strong links with TGR. "The aim is to develop the research and its commercialisation," he said.

The Federal Minister for Health and Ageing, Senator Kay Patterson, said the fellowships provided successful applicants the chance to gain experience in important facets of the commercial development of research findings, including project planning, business planning, and knowledge of business and industry dynamics.

"They will establish, facilitate and maintain interactions between academia and industry, in particular fostering an understanding of the commercial aspects of R&D within academic institutions," she said.

The other fellowships were awarded to:

• Dr Cuong Duy Tran of the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, who will team with South Australian company Numico Research to study the use of milk derived and plant derived bioactives in combination with zinc as therapy in the eradication of Helicobacter Pylori infection and associated gastritis.
• Dr Yum Lina Yip
• of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, who teams with GlaxoSmithKline of Switzerland to map coding SNPs to protein structure.
• Dr Michael Rolph of the Garvan Institute in Sydney, who teams with Garvan spin-off G2 Therapies and US company Biogen in the discovery and validation of therapeutic targets for inflammatory disease using genomic targets.
• Dr Amanda Edgley from the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University, who will work with Swedish-based AstraZeneca to target obesity by manipulating metabolism using genetically modified mice.