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| The University of Queensland Research Institutes |
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The University of Queensland (UQ) is a research-intensive university based in Brisbane, Australia. UQ’s new infrastructure and flourishing research culture are recognised internationally for bioscience discoveries, which are being translated into clinical practice and commercialised to alleviate global health and environmental problems. Much of this capability is concentrated in four recently created research institutes: the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine, the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and the Queensland Brain Institute. They have attracted a community of scientists and engineers who collaborate with peers in leading institutions throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
The IMB takes a multi-disciplinary approach, developing diverse programs in areas such as bioinformatics, genomics, developmental biology, structural biology and drug design – all leading to outcomes with value to science, industry and the community. With such a diverse range of research opportunities, the commercialisation capacity of the IMB is extremely strong.
IMBcom is commissioned with the task of taking the research outcomes of the IMB from bench to business and as such, develops strong alliances and partnerships with companies in the pharmaceutical and research industries.
Drug delivery
- interference RNA drug delivery (also called iRNA and siRNA)
- Dendrimed - combining benefits of dendrimer and polymer technologies for site targeted drug delivery
- Pain free micro/nano-projection delivery using a patch applied to the skin for vaccines and therapeutics
- Low cost inorganic nanoparticle as the carrier for drug delivery
- improving the 'swallow-ability' of existing prescribed drugs to improve compliance in aged patient
- Wound care improvements by including 'accelerated healing' molecules onto surface of wound dressings
Regenerative medicine
- Novel polymer based scaffolds with biocompatability and desired (physical and biological) structural properties
- rapid production of scaffolds
- novel sterilisation appropriate for high throughput and packaging
- tools to understand and mimic the stem cell micro-niche
- artificial meniscus for knee surgery
- artifical artery
Natural products are a great source of chemical diversity. The Majority of drugs introduced worldwide over the past 25 years came from a natural source. The University of Queensland (UQ) has several unique natural product libraries and has world class scientists that specialize in purifying and developing lead compounds.
UQ’s Natural Product Libraries
Marine Parazoa - 15,000 unique chemical structures
Marine Microbe - 6,000 mostly novel compounds
Microbial Extract L1 - 100,000 chemical structures
Microbial Extract L2 - 50,000 chemically diverse metabolites
Pure Compounds - 1,000 pure natural products and synthetic derivatives
UQ has a strong track record in commercialisation and technology transfer. Over a quarter of Australia’s university-based research commercialisation staff are at UQ, and its past successes include the vaccine for cervical cancer.
www.imb.uq.edu.au
 
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