Image: Hagerstown Community College.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has used a major biotech convention in the United States as a platform to announce a landmark deal between two companies in Australia to create a new drug to treat Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
The deal will see Brisbane-based NuNerve Pty Ltd collaborate with pharmaceutical firm Patheon to process, develop, and manufacture a protein that plays a key role in repairing damaged motor neurons.
The Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland will then evaluate the treatment in a series of lab tests, with a view to doing human trials in the future.
NuNerve, which funds a number of MND research programs at the QBI, was established through a multi-million dollar bequest from Queensland entrepreneur Peter Goodenough, who lost his life to MND in 2004.
The treatment, which Patheon will manufacture at its biomanufacturing facility in the Brisbane suburb of Woollongabba, was identified by researchers from the QBI and the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, led by Professor Perry Bartlett and Professor Andrew Boyd.
“This is Queensland’s world-class science in action,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
The Queensland Premier announced the deal at the BIO International Convention in San Francisco, highlighting the unique role Patheon’s Woollongabba facility plays in drug development in Australia.
“Up until the establishment of this facility in 2013, our researchers and biotech companies had been forced to go overseas to source the quantities of the trial drugs they needed,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
Manufacturing the treatment in Queensland holds the potential for providing a significant boost to the state economy by retaining local research talent.
“Having a facility based in Brisbane that can do the job means our drug researchers can produce what they need much more cheaply and they have greater control over the products that are produced,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“The Patheon facility is an integral part of my government’s commitment to take research out of the lab and get it into the marketplace.”
