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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
Three Fulbright scholars for Deakin 
Professor David Stokes, Deakin’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), says the university is thrilled to be welcoming three Fulbright students from America over the next six to eight months.
“This is a significant recognition for the students, Julia Back, Emily Cornwell and Emily Morgan, and equally significant recognition of Deakin’s growing reputation for international quality research,” Professor Stokes said.
The Fulbright Scholar Program was first mooted to the United States Congress in 1945 by J. William Fulbright, a senator for Arkansas who had a fine academic background, including as a Rhodes Scholarship holder
In the wake of World War II, Fulbright saw the scholarships as a much-needed way to promote “mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries in the world”.
Since 1946, more than 250,000 students have travelled overseas to study under the program.
Emily Cornwell comes from the delightfully named Kalamazoo University. While at Deakin she will be conducting research into the adaptations associated with hypersaline conditions of a Victorian lake.
A number of these lakes occur in western Victoria, which is part of the biggest volcanic plain in the Southern hemisphere.
Emily Morgan, an environmental scientist, will look at mussels in a protected lake outside Geelong.
Julia Back’s research will be on the behavioural responses of Australian fur seals to boat-based disturbances in breeding colonies.
“International quality research is what it is all about these days and Deakin has been recognising this for some time,” Professor Stokes said.
“We have our own programs to send
our researchers overseas which is important.
“To have the quality of our work recognised and promoted as part
of the Fulbright Scholar Program with its vast international standing
is very welcome indeed.”
Research Services Division:
Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds
Pigdons Road, Geelong, Victoria 3217 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 5227 2673 Facsimile:
+61 3 5227 2175
Email: dvc-research@deakin.edu.au
www.deakin.edu.au/research
Deakin Research Updates - back copies
Back issues of Deakin Research Updates are available at: www.deakin.edu.au/research
Understanding China – a business case!
Doing business in China is not all beer
and skittles.
Just ask Dr Mona Chung.
After completing her PhD on the impact of cultural differences on Foster’s 13 year sojourn into China, she is now one of Deakin’s resident experts in the field she has played a pivotal role in developing – the study of international business, particularly in the Orient.
“There is no magic wand,” she says of setting up a business in China.
“A lot of companies see the size of the potential market, 1.3 billion people, and are excited by that. But it’s not that simple. About 90 per cent of businesses setting up in China are not making a profit.
“As an international business consultant I saw business after business pouring millions and millions into China, all making the same mistakes as the others.
“One of the major conclusions I drew from my experience and then from my research is the cultural differences are the major barrier.
“It is quite easy to say ‘oh well we don’t know how to use chopsticks’ or ‘we don’t know how to speak Chinese’ however, in my view they are part of the factors but relatively minor compared to the understanding of business behaviour and conduct. In others words, without the language and chopsticks one can still be successful but without the understanding of the differences in behavioural patterns, life in China is less likely to be easy.
Xavier searches for grains of truth
When St Paul said to
St Timothy “take a little wine for the good of thy stomach,”
he was guessing.
A couple of thousand years later researchers like Deakin’s Dr Xavier
Conlan no longer have to guess.
In fact they are able to recognise to the smallest degree just what it is in the wine that does the good to the stomach when you next raise your glass in a toast.
Or eat your toast.
Dr Conlan is part of a team of scientists at Deakin that has set out to identify the human health benefits caused by bioactives in grains, olives and wine – a search that will provide increased business opportunities for Australian primary producers as well as producing the next generation of cutting edge analytical equipment.
Bioactives are specific molecules that have useful, health-giving properties. Once recognised and even separated, they can be used in the development of medicines and functional foods.
Functional foods are those with components - including anti-oxidants - that provide a specific health benefit.
“What we are about at Deakin on this project is developing the instrumentation looking at screening these sorts of good compounds,” Dr Conlan said.
“We know the stuff is there. We are developing the instruments that, using chemiluminescence, can highlight that.”
Once highlighted, there are two potential steps forward.
The luck of the Irish....