The funding, part of the Emerging Industry Infrastructure Fund (EIIF) Synthetic Biology and Biomanufacturing round, will allow Macquarie University to expand its Australian Genome Foundry (AGF) and Incubator facilities, increase the scientific workforce and boost the number of start-ups using the spaces.
“This funding will fortify NSW’s position as the national leader in synthetic biology and biomanufacturing,” says Dr Tom Williams, AGF’s Chief Scientific Officer. “It will enable the NSW synthetic biology and manufacturing ecosystem to realise its full potential.”
The funding will allow the MQ Incubator DeepTech laboratory to be fitted out with molecular biology and biomanufacturing equipment. This will enable more start-up companies to incubate in proximity to the AGF. To complement this, Macquarie University will fund more office space and meeting rooms, and provide access to an existing community of early-stage start-ups and scale-ups at the MQ Incubator.
"We estimate that it currently costs a single start-up many millions of dollars to set up and equip laboratories that facilitate even basic research and development, let alone the cutting-edge equipment needed for effective synthetic biology research," says Dr Williams. “The AGF and MQ Incubator DeepTech facilities will allow start-ups to build, test and scale-up processes before having to outlay these infrastructure costs, helping them to attract further investment without compromising intellectual property ownership."
The AGF and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology (CoESB), both headquartered at Macquarie University, are proof of the capabilities of an integrated synthetic biology and biomanufacturing ecosystem in NSW. Three new start-up companies have already emerged from the CoESB.
“In this ecosystem, start-up companies spun out of CoESB and elsewhere can either incubate at the genome foundry or use AGF facilities to prove their technologies at laboratory scale and then move to fermentation facilities, such as at Cauldron in Orange, NSW, to demonstrate effectiveness at large-scale facilities,” says CoESB Centre Director, Professor Ian Paulsen.
The funding application was a joint bid by Macquarie University, Vow, Bioplatforms Australia, Nourish Ingredients and the NSW Department of Primary Industries. It includes 15 industry co-funded PhD scholarships to generate a much-needed talent pipeline for Australia's rapidly growing synbio and biomanufacturing industries.
