Renowned polymer chemist to join Bio21

Expatriate Australian polymer chemist Prof Andrew Holmes is set to join Melbourne's Bio21 Institute of Molecular Science and Biotechnology in October.

The Cambridge don is relocating his research team to the institute with the support of the $10 million Victorian Endowment for Science, Knowledge and Innovation (VESKI), which has awarded Holmes the inaugural Innovation Fellowship, worth $500,000 over five years to add to the Federation Fellowship he has received from the ARC.

Holmes was the co-inventor of the world's first light-emitting polymers and co-founded Cambridge Display Technology, which is developing commercial applications for the technology including lightweight super-thin flexible video screens for use in televisions and computers and other electronic devices and single colour alphanumeric displays.

But while Holmes will continue the light-emitting polymer research with CSIRO support, his interests also lie at the interface between biology and chemistry. Through a collaboration with biologists at Cambridge's Babraham Institute, Holmes and his team have developed a new and novel class of synthetic molecules called phosphatidyl inositides, which mimic natural signalling molecules involved in intracellular signalling pathways. By attaching these molecules to affinity beads, the molecules can be used as 'hooks' to bind to and 'fish out' proteins involved in signalling pathways -- a technique that has resulted in the discovery of more than 20 new signalling proteins.

The researchers are continuing to develop techniques for identifying interactions between different molecules in cell-signalling pathways.

"We'd like to design chemical ways of bringing together proteins to see how they interact [at a chemical level]," Holmes said. "And now that we know what the proteins are, wouldn't it be great to develop, using polymer science, an array of molecules that can be used to knock out a single part of a pathway without affecting other intracellular signalling pathways."

Holmes said he was looking forward to working in the Bio21 Institute, which he said would bring a variety of scientists working in different disciplines from biochemistry and genetics to dental science, veterinary science and chemistry together to work in a multidisciplinary environment.

"The frontier of science and technology is at the interface of multiple disciplines -- that's where the breakthroughs are going to happen," he said.

Holmes will also lend his experience in developing and managing collaborative research projects and commercialising his inventions to Bio21. Other areas of research where Holmes hopes to become involved include small molecule drug discovery and tissue engineering.

Holmes' appointment is split between the University of Melbourne and CSIRO Molecular Science, which both worked with VESKI and the Federation Fellowship program to attract him back to Australia.

Chairman of VESKI's board of directors Prof Adrienne Clarke said that she was pleased that Holmes was the first VESKI Fellow, and hinted that more VESKI fellows might be announced in the near future. Interest from the $10 million endowment is being used to bring back and support successful expatriates in the fields of science and technology.

"We have to build for the future our own IP, and really this is done by people," Clarke said.

Announcing Holmes' VESKI fellowship, Victorian innovation minister John Brumby said more than one million Australians were working overseas, but many of them were interested in coming back and making a contribution here.