Collaboration key to shift science dial

CHIEF scientist Peter Klinken believes the life sciences landscape has changed considerably since the early 1990s, when Western Australia punched well above its weight on the research scene.

In the 1980s, WA’s Barry Marshall and his South Australian counterpart, Robin Warren, identified the cause of stomach ulcers: a discovery for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

By 1990, Fiona Stanley had launched the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, now called Telethon Kids Institute.

These and many other individual researchers had put the state on the map with their dogged pursuit of discoveries.

Also among them was Fiona Wood, a plastic surgeon who, in 1993, teamed up with medical scientist Marie Stoner on tissue engineering, later to create spray-on skin.

A decade later, these dedicated health and life sciences stars reached their pinnacles.

In 2005, the year Professor Marshall won the Nobel Prize, Dr Wood was named Australian of the Year, just two years after Professor Stanley had earned the same honour.

However, in the very early 1990s, having previously conducted research overseas, Professor Klinken had witnessed the medical research world changing and believed WA was slow to adapt to the forces of collaboration required as experimentation became more complex and expensive.

Perhaps WA’s distance from other centres of excellence had bred a culture of self-imposed isolation.

“WA had a sense of the individual researcher toiling away under the midnight oil on their own,” Professor Klinken told Business News.

“What I had seen elsewhere was big teams working on projects together.

“That was a big change to me; you work in big, big teams and they are multidisciplinary.

“I think WA was slow to adapt to that.”

As a result, Professor Klinken believes the state lost the leadership it had and has struggled to catch up as other states forged ahead.

While the state’s key science guide lauds the contribution of big research organisations – Telethon Kids Institute, the Perron Institute and Lions Eye Institute, and the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research of which he was inaugural director in 1998 – he said there was insufficient collaboration within WA to create the scale required for world-leading results.

“Technology is expensive,” Professor Klinken said.

“If you are out there on your own, you can’t afford it. He said more collaboration was required across the state’s university sector to win the funding WA too often missed out on.

“We need to be partners to get a bigger slice of the pie rather than fighting over crumbs,” Professor Klinken said.

“In thirty years this has not improved fast enough.”

However, Professor Klinken still believes there have been significant advances in some areas, citing the commercial success in the biotechnology sphere.

“I get a sense there is vibrancy in the medtech and biotech area,” he said.

“That area was struggling. “Those companies are growing and finding success; and success begets success.”

It is perhaps no surprise to find that the early 1990s had few companies focused on technology in the healthcare field.

Drug company Cortecs International was at the start of a long journey to becoming a UK company; Thermalife International Pharmaceuticals was yet to become drug distribution company Pharmanet Online; troubled hospital owner Markalinga had become Australian Medical Enterprises; and Inovax listed in 1994. Controversy courted some of those businesses.

In fact, the corporate end of WA’s health research and biotechnology sector did not really emerge until the late 1990s, when life sciences was pulled into the bubble created by the dot.com internet explosion.

In the late 1990s, reverse takeovers of junior resources companies became commonplace.

Eqitx, Xcell Diagnostics, Genetic Technologies, Australian Healthcare Technology, Medical Monitors and Global Doctor all formed under such circumstances in 2000 or 2001.

Pharmaceutical player pSivida emerged from the shell of horticultural group Sumich Group, and Formulab became specialist health practice consolidator Foundation Healthcare.

It would be a stretch to suggest this was a significant sector in the WA economy at the time, or that many of these companies rewarded their investors in any considerable manner.

A best performer was most likely pSivida, which became US-based EyePoint Pharmaceuticals after a $60 million deal to be part of a newly merged entity.

But, as Professor Klinken suggested, things are bit different now. In between, there have been huge developments such as genomics and the opportunities created by human genome sequencing, which he describes as “mind-boggling”.

In addition, Professor Klinken cites advances including the internet, which made communication and collaboration much easier, and artificial intelligence, which had made the needle-in-a-haystack work of scientific research much more efficient.

In the background, WA has built major new state-of-the-art infrastructure during that time, including the Fiona Stanley Hospital, the Perth Children’s Hospital and new headquarters for both Telethon Kids and the Perkins institutes.

In 2017, Perth was named as a top-25 life sciences hub by independent equities analysts NDF Research, and WA was last year included in US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, considered a significant event by the sector.

On the stock market alone, there are now 14 listed companies worth almost $800 million in combination.

The biggest of these is PYC Therapeutics, which listed in 2006 and has a market capitalisation of around $200 million.

Importantly, the environment for funding at seed stage is improving with the emergence of venture capital such as Tattarang’s $250 million health-focused Tenmile fund and the state government’s realignment of its mining royalties investment trust to become the $1.67 billion Future Health Research and Innovation Fund.

Outside the stock market, there are other commercial successes, such as professors Steve Wilton and Sue Fletcher, whose pioneering research at the Perron Institute led to development of the drugs to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

That intellectual property was acquired by US pharmaceutical company Sarepta Therapeutics, which has paid millions in royalties back to WA.

In addition, researchers and academics behind scientific discoveries are being aided in their pathway to commercialisation by startup supporters such as The Centre for Entrepreneurial Research and Innovation, backed by the Bass Family Foundation established by mining magnate Charlie Bass.