The ACAB provides a unique cluster of skilled staff, equipment and infrastructure to enable bioengineering solutions for therapeutic translation and support of sovereign biomanufacturing capabilities
The ACAB is a key enabler for clinically driven translation of Australia’s expanding biologic based therapeutic pipeline. Protein and nucleic acid-based therapeutics and vaccines continue to be the primary drivers of the innovative Biotechnology sector, both in terms of novel modalities and commercial revenue. This centre has a primary goal of driving tomorrow’s life-saving therapies out of Australia’s leading Biomedical laboratories and into early-stage translation, spanning mechanism of action validation and clinical evaluation, while ensuring a long-term view of manufacturability and differentiated activity.
The centre is a collaboration across AIBN researchers and NCRIS capabilities including the National Biologics Facility (NBF) and the UQ node of Bioplatforms Australia (BPA), supported by capabilities such as TetraQ and Clinical Trial providers. The centre’s expertise and infrastructure capabilities span novel molecule discovery, protein engineering, manufacturing process development and establishment of clinically enabling manufacturing platforms. NBF is part of a national network of nodes based in Sydney and Melbourne as part of Therapeutic Innovation Australia, with expanded capabilities across small molecules and cell and gene therapies.
Research within the centre is focussed on solving key bottlenecks and technical challenges experienced by the biotechnology industry, around manufacturing efficiency and speed to market. ACAB provides access to highly refined multi-omics based analytics and genome-scale models for rationale engineering and incorporation of cutting-edge synthetic biology tools for custom iterative engineering and strain development. The Centre also incorporates the ARC Training Centre for Biopharmaceutical Innovation (CBI).