industry & reseArch
campusreview.com.au
There are many unproven therapies going ahead in clinics in Australia
and around the world that are not necessarily based on evidence.
What are some of the barriers universities face in realising this role?
Well, I think the will is there. I think everyone recognises stem cell
science is important. We all believe that it heralds a revolution in
medical practice. We’ve seen developments that have led to a
Nobel Prize in 2012 enter the clinic in 2014 just two years later,
so this is moving fast. Australia is struggling to keep up its profile
because things are moving so fast. The barriers, I suppose, are
vision and funding, and [the need to] put together strategies,
structures and infrastructure to maintain a cutting edge. That needs
to become a national strategy for the sector in [coming] years.
This report also argues that interdisciplinary collaboration between
researchers is essential. Could you give us an example of how this
could work in a practical sense?
Historically, some of the greatest breakthroughs in biology
have come from the collaboration of biologists, physicists,
mathematicians, physical scientists, etc; there’s no difference here.
Stem cell science involves large data sets. When we analyse the
genes being expressed in a particular tissue or even individual cells,
we need bioinformaticians to integrate data to assess its quality,
then to analyse it. Out of that comes new ideas about the networks
of genes that control the identity and behaviour of cells.
Another obvious example is the collaboration between biologists
and tissue engineers. This is critical for developing new therapies
that rely on cells and stem cells to replace lost tissue in disease and
injury situations.
What can be done to get stem cell research out of its disciplinary silo
and collaborating with other disciplines, even other industries?
There’s a will to do that and there’s a trend internationally. There are
so many fellowships for young people that more or less insist on
an interdisciplinary platform for the work. But it has to be integrated
into our education system early on. We need to encourage people
to straddle different worlds. I suppose with focus comes great
depth but it’s a changing world in science and we need to have
an appreciation [for various fields. For example] biologists need to
have an appreciation for analysing large datasets via bioinformatics.
They don’t necessarily have to be an expert but they have to be
sufficiently adept in knowing how the analysis pipeline should
proceed and where to go to find experts. I think it’s [about how
universities medical research institutes] train people. Do we just put
them into a lab and [make them] focus? Or do we back off to some
degree, become generalists and bring interesting people together
in an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary way?
What can be done to help researchers get their stem research out
through the pipeline and into healthcare?
Firstly, therapies have to be based on good, evidence-based
science. There are many unproven therapies going ahead in clinics
in Australia and around the world that are not necessarily based
on evidence. It has to be good science, and there’s still much to
learn about stem cell biology. On the one hand, we’ve got new
therapies entering the clinic for macular degeneration based on
retinal epithelium grown from stem cells in a dish, we’ve got two
clinical trials beginning for neuro-degenerative diseases and for
inflammatory diseases of gout, for example. This is happening fast
and is exciting.
On the other hand, there are many other therapies that are a
long way from application and we’re just going to have to knuckle
down and get smarter about some of the barriers to having those
things work. It just requires good scientific infrastructure and
support to keep the science going. In the end, we need to train
people in translational science as well as good laboratory science.
There must be a sector of our research community that knows
how to take innovations into the clinic and commercialise them.
Then we probably need to address how we can make the road to
clinical trials and regulation a little bit more streamlined. Under the
government’s Innovation and Science Statement, there’s money
earmarked for support of translational pipelines.
The report mentions the prospect of a centre to accelerate clinical
translation. Would that help?
It’s always a grand gesture to demand a centre, but I think we
don’t have a centre that covers all the spaces we need to cover in
Australia. We’ve certainly got departments and institutes dedicated
to regenerative science but they’re either oriented for basic
science and lack the pipeline to clinical translation or they’re more
medically focused, clinically focused. I think it would be great in
Australia to have the universities stand up and commit to building
centres of excellence, on campus, affiliated with hospitals where
we can champion regeneration biology, stem cell biology, in all its
dimensions. That’s a big ask but that’s what we need in Australia
because that’s what other people have got overseas and that’s what
we’re competing against. It’s a matter of support and vision. We need
to be lobbying for that sort of outcome.
Do you think universities are willing to do this?
The will is there. [The question is] whether, in these periods of
austerity, the infrastructure funds are there. Right at this point in
time, there might be a struggle. When some of these therapies
come online and the writing is clearly on the wall about the
revolution in medical research that stem cell biology will bring, then
[we’ll be] in a better position to convince them that such centres of
clinical excellence and research excellence are worth developing
for Australian science.
Is the debate about stem cell ethics still a barrier to pursuing
research?
That’s a good question, and the answer is no, except we have to be
careful that our reputations as stem cell scientists do not fall into
disrepute because of the activities of a minority of clinicians who
are selling mo