The COVID-19 pandemic delivered many lessons across the world, especially in relation to fragile supply chains. Some of these lessons have been well learned in Australia, while others were forgotten as the crisis receded.
If you are staring at the empty bowsers at a petrol station, or you’re a farmer looking at the cost of fertilizer, you are probably wondering how such fragility could exist, given these lessons we thought we had all understood.
But then there is the RNA production giving us reasons to be cheerful. The NSW government put forward a $100 million commitment in 2021 to build an RNA Research and Pilot Manufacturing Facility at Macquarie University.
That commitment, which will dramatically accelerate the development of RNA-based therapies and treatments, will deliver its first product batches this year.
In this episode of the Commercial Disco, RNA Australia chief executive Paul McDonald talks through the global forces that helped spur the investment in the RNA manufacturing pilot – and describes how the facility will be used to deliver commercial value back to the nation.
RNA research and RNA technology development was not as new as reported as COVID-19 swept the world after 2020. There were already blockbuster products in the market based on RNA developments, and Pfizer at least, had already been working on RNA-based influenza vaccines when the pandemic hit.
But it was COVID-19 that really drove investment in RNA research and technology, Mr McDonald says – and led to the creation of RNA Australia and the NSW government stunning commitment to building production facilities.
The RNA Research and Pilot Manufacturing Facility brings together Sydney University, UNSW, ANU, Macquarie and UTS with the $100 million commitment from the NSW government.
The ambition is simple. With a best-in-class manufacturing facility, ideas and breakthroughs can more easily move from the research bench in to production and then into trials.
The bottom line, Mr McDonald says, is that commercialisation of research out of partner universities will be accelerated, and the research will stay in Australia.
Plus, Australia will have an RNA manufacturing facility and expertise that can be scaled-up to meet the needs of a future health crisis like Covid.
“RNA has been around a while, but the pandemic definitely stimulated the investment and the growth in RNA technolog,” Mr McDonald told the Commercial Disco.
“Because it’s effectively a platform. It’s a tunable and adaptable platform that you can put an idea through a sequence into the platform and create a whole new asset.
“[It means] can accelerate your pathway to get multiple shots on goal as a startup or as a BioTech or as a research group looking to form a company.
“RNA is a global mega trend, and there’s a substantial investment going into the research in RNA outcomes. this pandemic definitely stimulated the investment and the sequence.
“So now we’ve got flow, and we’ve got programs moving through rapidly, and now we’ve got a facility that’ll do an end-to-end manufacturing,” Mr McDonald said.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.