Return of a proteomics pioneer

A new company established by proteomics pioneer Dr Brad Walsh has been chosen by a global leader to be its regional proteomics centre.

Brad Walsh's career path has mirrored the development of proteomics in Australia, beginning at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital Centre for Immunology, where he and Andrew Gooley (now Proteome Systems' chief scientific officer) were doing "really what you would now term proteomics, only a lot slower and tougher."

Less than a decade later, Walsh is CEO of a start-up company that this week was named the Asia-Pacific centre of excellence in proteomics for instrumentation giant Perkin-Elmer.

Walsh's company, Minomics, will provide training and R&D facilities for Perkin-Elmer's regional proteomics operations, and host the US company's latest research tools.

Between St Vincent's and Minomics, Walsh went on a self-described six-year roller-coaster ride as business manager at the pioneering Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF) at Macquarie University, hired by Keith Williams, now CEO of Proteome Systems.

APAF broke the ground for proteomics in Australia at a time when, as Walsh says, "People would say 'we've got genomics, why would we need proteomics?'"

But it was there that Walsh first experienced industry partnering, as APAF teamed with Bio-Rad to design the first proteomics instrumentation.

"We got into the area of big science -- and you need partners for big science," Walsh says. "In '96, it wasn't as though people were clamouring for the [proteomics] instrumentation.

"But when we conceived of this it was certainly in the middle of a boom [in life sciences]. You've got the knowledge, the tools, the skill base and the jump on the competition, and you don't often have that in Australia.

"Here was a case of: how do you leverage that?

Minomic, formerly called Proteomeca, shares a facility with Sydney separation technology specialist Gradipore, where "there's a real fit between the two companies," according to Walsh.

As well as Perkin-Elmer's new Progenesis software and multiprobes, the Minomic work suite includes Waters mass spectroscopy, chromatography and software.

It's a fully-integrated set-up, Walsh says. "Proteomics is a platform that has a lot of elements to it. If you don't choose they wisely you lose the power of the automation," he says.

"It used to be enough to know what the protein was. Now you need to know what they do and how they interact. We're answering biological questions and these are the tools to nail down that biology and move towards drug discovery. The drug company message is 'we don't want a thousand targets, we want 10 targets'."

That's important because, Walsh says, Minomics' vision is to be a discovery company. He says it's a vision shared by Perkin-Elmer, which he first hooked up with at the Siena protein conference last year. Since then, things have moved quickly.

"They have some really good people here and I think we quickly found we had a common vision," he says. "For us the strength of doing this with such a company is that it's good for Australia." Meanwhile, Minomics can do its own work in areas that don't conflict with P-E's.

Walsh is also keen to maintain good ties with other proteomics nodes in Australia.

"Protein science is one of Australia's great strengths," he says. "There are huge opportunities for collaboration. I see that it's far better to work together than to compete.

"If we are to achieve our goals of growing this company we need to look beyond the borders."