Diabetes project sets new trend for NHMRC

By Daniella Goldberg
Wednesday, 06 March, 2002

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has come up with a new model for commercialising medical research.

The model's initial incarnation is the development of a therapeutic vaccine for juvenile diabetes.

Prof Warwick Anderson, head of the NHMRC research committee, said the idea had come about when the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) contacted the council about setting up a coordinating centre to look around for promising approaches for developing therapeutic vaccines, and providing support for them to be tested.

The NHMRC and the JDRF, an international research group, have each contributed $5 million over three years towards creating an infrastructure that would rapidly translate research on prevention type I diabetes from the laboratory to the clinic.

Commonwealth Minister for Health and Ageing, Senator Kay Patterson, said the partnership would give children at risk hope for a treatment.

"The fact that Australia was chosen as the site for this very worthwhile venture is a great tribute to the NHMRC's prestigious reputation overseas and recognition of Australia's expertise in this area," Patterson said.

Anderson said the NHMRC had been searching for promising candidates for the vaccine.

"Although the search is worldwide the actual research, in the end, will be done here" he said.

"Our hope is that we can come up with something so that when kids are first diagnosed with [juvenile diabetes] we can give them this therapy that will reverse it or at least stop regression."

Australian researchers who have expressed interest in the project were asked to present potential therapeutic candidates to the committee this week.

The centre's international steering committee, co-chaired by Prof Ian Gust,a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Melbourne University, and Ronald Ellis, vice-president for vaccine development at US company Shire Biologics, met this week to further develop plans for the centre.

"The centre should be operating by the end of the year," Anderson said. He himself will step down from the committee.

The new diabetes vaccine and immunotherapy research coordinating centre will be a free-standing entity, with a CEO with experience in product development, reporting to an independent board.

The CEO will have flexibility to contract with Australian research groups, organisations and industry.

"The centre will be set up to contract research anywhere in Australia for clinical trials or basic research," Anderson said. "It will be there to develop business plans and for other specific activities.

"We have not set in mind where the headquarters will be located - it will be according to where [the CEO] wants to live. "This is not just another lot of money to investigate the causes of diabetes. Though that is important, this is meant to take up the new opportunity that has come out of research to produce a vaccine and develop it further. It's a very targeted research activity.

"We are very interested in developing this model for other diseases."

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