Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing - as simple as ABC
On Monday, June 25th, following the announcement of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between Deakin University and Biocon, India’s biggest biotechnology company, Vice-Chancellor Professor Sally Walker was invited on to Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour on ABC Local Radio 774 in Melbourne.
Melbourne lawyer Waleed Aly was Faine’s co-host
for the program.To hear the interview go to: abc.net.au/melbourne/mornings/conversation.htm
This is the transcript:
The Conversation Hour
JF: Our first guest is going to talk to us about Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing which is complete gobbledegook to me, but Professor Sally Walker who runs Deakin University, undoubtedly has become an expert on Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing because Deakin’s Geelong Campus is about to get into Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing in a big way. Well what is it? How does it work? Why does it matter? Sally will tell us in a moment or two when she joins us on the Conversation Hour as our first guest.
JF: Professor Sally Walker is our first guest. She runs Deakin University where she’s Vice-Chancellor and she’s here to tell us about Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing. I don’t have a clue, not one clue, what Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing is. I don’t know what mammalian is, but I know what cells are. Professor Sally Walker is very excited about it and she can tell us more.
JF: Sally, welcome to the Conversation Hour.
SW: Thank you John.
JF: What on earth is this all about?
SW: This is one aspect of a Memorandum of Understanding which we have recently entered into with Biocon, which is India’s largest biotech company. This aspect relates to a call for bids which the Australian Government has made recently. Australia does not have the capacity to produce the proteins which are necessary for preclinical testing and clinical trials of drugs. So currently a huge amount of business goes out of Australia overseas.
JF: Mmmh.
SW: So Deakin University is going to bid for this facility. We hope to win the bid and run this facility at our Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds. Biocon which has a large scale Mammalian Cell facility in Bangalore is going to partner us in this bid to establish this at our Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds.
JF: This is kind of weird isn’t it? I mean almost everything that we hear about goes off shore…
SW: Yes
JF: …because of cheaper labour costs and yet this is something that the Indians are going to help establish back here.
SW: Obviously the owners of Biocon or the owner, a very interesting person called Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw wish to attach to Deakin University because of a unique model we have at Deakin University working with industry. And if we get the Mammalian Cell facility at our Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds it will bring industry to co-locate with the facility so that they’re side-by-side with us and they can conduct their trials and their preclinical testing on site. So it will have enormous flow on effects, positive flow on effects.
JF: I can see all of that but don’t misunderstand me, but why Deakin?
SW: Ah well this is very interesting.
JF: We have a biotech technology precinct in Parkville; tie-ins with the much bigger universities with big medical faculties and all the rest of it at Monash and Melbourne. We’ve got the Baker Institute at the Alfred, so why Deakin?
SW: The Victorian government brought Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw to Victoria in February March this year and she visited all of those places and she will have collaborations with other universities, but the model she was attracted to was the model at our Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds where we work in close collaboration with industry and we work on industry relevant problems. And another aspect of the MOU that I signed with Biocon in Bangalore earlier this month is for Deakin University to establish a Research Institute in Bangalore.
JF: Back the other way
SW: Yes that’s right. This will be a capacity building exercise. India needs skilled people, it doesn’t need a brain drain. And the reason that Kiran was attracted to Deakin University is that we work very well, our researchers work very well with industry in a cross disciplinary way. Now the advantage we have over some of the other institutions that you mentioned, is that we have a lot of land, we have some 360 hectares of land. Currently we have a building which is called the Geelong Technology Precinct which is a 2 hectare building in which our researchers work side by side with industry. So we’re able to drive research further along the commercialisation track because we start that way with researchers and Kiran was very attracted to this model. It is said that in India the PhD students are very, very well trained. They get good PhDs, but they’re not PhDs that allow them to know how to work cross-disciplinary and they’re not PhDs that allow them to know how to work closely with industry. So the MOU that we signed involves us establishing a research institute in Bangalore which will contribute to the growth of technological industries there. It will ensure that there it redresses the brain drain from India. Then when we went from Bangalore to Dehli and met with the Central Science Minister, he said that he didn’t want us to set up one Research Institute in India, he wants us to set up three research institutes.
JF: Oh, as you do.
SW: As you do. There was some humour about this because like me he’s a lawyer, so here were two lawyers setting up Research Institutes to do deal with biotechnology and nanotechnology. We think that with the first of these in Bangalore, we will have 100 new PhD students per year, moving to 300-500 PhD students in the fullness of time.
Ali: You’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions Dr Kiran and I’m very intrigued to know about this woman, because from the little snippets I get she sounds like an incredible character.
SW: She’s a very, very interesting woman. Her mother ran, still runs actually, I’ve met her mother, runs a dry cleaning business in Bangalore.
JF: What, retail?
SW: Yes, it is the best dry cleaner in Bangalore and I’m sure it would be. She has a connection with Australia in that she studied Brewing at the University of Ballarat, as you would, at the same time that Steve Bracks was there, although he tells me he doesn’t remember meeting her at that time.
Ali: She studied Brewing?
SW: Yes.
Ali: That’s a form of biotechnology.
SW: It is. Then she went back and in 1978 she established what is now India’s largest biotech company. I visited their facility, it’s a huge facility in Bangalore on many acres of land. It produces the medicines and proteins to develop pharmaceuticals. They make things like insulin and proteins for medical applications. She employs 2000 scientists or more than 2000 scientists. 30 percent of them are women and their average age is 28.
JF: Oh!
SW: It’s a fantastic facility. What we have…
JF: Sorry, the growth rate. Sorry, 1970 what?
SW: ’78.
JF: So in a bit more than 25 years, 2000 scientists working?
SW: Yes.
JF: I can’t think of any equivalent that comes to mind for a business that’s grown that fast in that industry let alone in any other industry. That is astonishing.
SW: Even in Indian terms where there is a huge and rapid growth, the economy is booming in India and they have a commitment to the knowledge economy in India, even by Indian standards it’s an extraordinary success story. What we’re hoping to do at our Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds is create something like Silicon Valley there. As you know Silicon Valley is in San Francisco attached to a number of universities, but particularly to Stamford University. It’s a precinct where industry and researchers work together and we believe we can do this at our Geelong Technology area at our Campus at Waurn Ponds at Geelong…our Geelong Technology Precinct. We already work in close collaboration with industry partners there, so our researchers and industry are working together.
JF: So is it just cheap land? Is that one of the major attractions. The sort of costs to have to do this closer in to town would be prohibitive so suddenly space is a very valuable commodity for you?
SW: Well space is important. It’s not only that it’s expensive, it’s simply not, you couldn’t build a 2 hectare building in Parkville, there’s no where to build it, so we have the advantage of space, but we also have this unique model of our researchers being accustomed to and being very comfortable with, working with industry. When I go to conferences about intellectual property, people talk about the point at which a researcher has an idea which is ready to be commercialised and they go out and seek a venture capitalist partner to commercialise the intellectual property and how difficult that is. Well at Deakin we don’t have that point because we’re working from the beginning with industry, pushing the research along the pure to applied commercialisation track.
JF: I’m trying to think of other countries and their universities are not exclusively in capital cities, In fact a lot of the great universities, Oxford Cambridge, are not in London, just for a start. Likewise as you go round and I’m thinking of great institutions in Europe and the United States they are not in capital cities. Australia in fact is the odd one out, in having its major teaching institutions in the cities.Ali: Normally go away to college
JF: Yeah Yeah. And there’s no reason why a satellite city like Geelong or Bendigo shouldn’t be a centre of knowledge for all the reasons you’re talking about.
SW: Well the Victorian Government wishes to make Victoria a biotechnology hub, and that’s already happening to some extent in Parkville and at Monash University in Clayton, but if we can establish something similar and dealing with things in a different way, a unique way at Geelong, that will obviously add to the economy.
JF: But you’ve got all sorts of benefits. There’s lifestyle benefits from not having to live in the inner city or the city near to some of those big institutions. Plus there’s the cheap land that you’ve already identified and mentioned, and the fact that if you’re going to bring overseas students, I would have thought that Geelong’s a pretty keen place to market yourselves for overseas students.
Ali: Is land that cheap in Geelong though?
SW: We have 350 or 360 hectares so that land is available for industry to co-locate with us. Geelong is experiencing something of a boom and so it should be, it‘s a terrific lifestyle for people. When I was in India, I went to, as you do, to a jeweller’s shop and the owner who was a fifth generation.
JF: It’s all work done while there though
SW: Yes it was, entirely work; it was student recruitment because he was a fifth generation jeweller and had studied finance at DU GWP and he could definitely be a marketer for us, he was very, very positive about his experience there. If we can do what we’re hoping to do, the Silicon Valley of the south, at Deakin University’s Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds. We think in the next five years we can attract 400 researchers to our campus.
JF: 400?
SW: Yes, we believe so
JF: From overseas or around Australia?
SW: Around Australia and overseas. With 20 major research collaborations and partnerships. We already have more than 100 based there and we have some 7 important industry partnerships working with us at our Geelong Technology Precinct in this 2 hectare building and we’re hoping to replicate that and extend it. We think that the connection with India will allow us to collaborate with Indian researchers as well and Indian industry.
JF: Can we take the temperature of the tertiary education sector through you. Here you are running one of the fastest growing universities in Australia and certainly here in Victoria Deakin’s starting to make its presence known. Massive change in the tertiary education sector, and I don’t want to necessarily go into the Labor/ Liberal models and all of those sort of things. but more, Melbourne University changing its intake, is that the sort of thing other universities are going to copy do you think?
SW: I think that Melbourne University is going to make significant changes to the way that it conducts it undergraduate and graduate programs starting next year and I think it’s a very interesting experiment and I wish my colleagues at the University of Melbourne well in relation to it. I do think…
JF: Interesting doesn’t mean much Sally Walker. In what sense?
SW: Well, I think it’s very brave. It’s a whole new way of engaging with students. Students who want to study Law straight from school, will no longer be able to do so at Melbourne University.
JF: What is it, Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Architecture I think and say one more, you’re not going to be able to get into unless you’ve done another course first.
SW: Oh I’m not sure about all of the details in relation to that. I don’t think it’s the case in relation to Medicine initially, I think that’s going to take some time. In relation to Law, certainly, people will now be faced with some options, perhaps going to Melbourne University and seeing if they can do well enough in a generalist degree to perhaps get into Law later either on a Fee Paying Place or on a Commonwealth Supported Place or alternatively coming to some of the other universities, such as Deakin University, to study Law straight from school. We also encourage students to study combined degrees. We think that Law/Commerce is a good degree to study, Law/Arts, Law/Science. It will not be possible to do that at Melbourne University.
JF: So do you expect to get a higher level of intake instead of being further down the pecking order with school graduates wanting to go straight to a Law School, you’ll expect some greater demand?
SW: We’re doing a lot of market research and it suggests for a number of reasons, not only for the changes at Melbourne University, but for a number of reasons, there is greater interest in Deakin University’s programs than there might have been in the past. I think that part of this is because we have an absolute commitment to making our programs relevant and responsive to the needs of employers. So students know that if they come to Deakin University, they’re going to do a degree which has been influenced by the types of people who are likely to employ them in the future. And we also I think, when I started at Deakin and got to know a lot more about it before I actually took up my role, I couldn’t help thinking that Deakin was a well kept secret. So we’ve tried to stop it being a well kept secret. We’ve marketed and advertised our courses better. I think that Careers teachers in particular, Careers teachers are an enormously helpful group of people and they have helped us to make our programs, the sort of programs that Gen Y want. They want flexibility. They don’t want to be told what to do. They don’t want to be told that a university knows what’s best for them. Gen Y wants to experiment to have flexible options available to them. They want to be able to combine work and study. So we have a very significant use of technology in relation to our teaching programs and we are also very flexible in terms of the courses that we offer.
Ali: Just on the Melbourne model issue though about attracting the brighter students, or going to other universities now because they won’t be able to go directly to Law at Melbourne. Do you think though that’s a very short term phenomenon? I mean once you find that mature age students or postgrad students now doing Law they’re probably going to end up being a better product just because they’re more mature by the time they’re starting it. I know I’d do a lot better with a Law degree now than I did when I started.
JF: You could always do another one
Ali: I could …maybe I will.
SW: Come to Deakin! (all laughing) No look I don’t think Gen Y wants to be told that. I think Gen Y wants to make their own decisions about that. You could always study Law as a mature age student if you wanted to.
JF: Plenty of people do.
SW: And plenty of people do. You don’t need to change your model to do that and you don’t need to say this is the only way. So I think that the, the good thing, and I really encourage my colleagues at Melbourne University to continue along this track because I do think…
Ali: It sounds like you just want it to continue because you think it’s helping you though.
SW: Oh I wouldn’t be so cynical. But I think that it is going to change the landscape in relation to student recruitment. Melbourne University had an undergraduate straight from school, student recruitment profile to die for. Absolutely the top students wishing to go to Melbourne University, although not all of them, some of them may want to do a niche program elsewhere. But this is going to change all of that. This is going to mean that people have some very, very significant decisions to make and I think it will change the landscape of higher education in Victoria and our market research suggests that Deakin University will be one of the winners in relation to that.
JF: Well, congratulations on making this ground breaking deal with the Indians. Lots of Universities have lost money overseas in South Africa, in China and other Asian venues, so we’ll watch with great interest Sally whether or not this one takes off. A Mammalian Cell Bioprocessing facility at Deakin’s Geelong Campus in exchange for a biotechnology setup in Bangalore that Deakin will be running. Professor Sally Walker, Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University has been talking to us about it and she’ll stay with us as Ged Carney joins us in just a moment on the Conversation Hour to talk about providing new facilities for nurses working in East Timor. Which Victorian, in fact Australian nurses have been asked to help with but the entire community can rally around to help.
For further details about Jon Faine, The Conversation Hour, or ABC Local Radio 774, visit: www.abc.net.au/melbourne/