An Australian delegate comprised of bio-officials spanning research, academia, and industry, recently visited Korea to discuss partnerships with domestic biotech companies.
At a meeting between the delegates and Korean biotech companies on Tuesday evening, Korea Biomedical Review sat down with two officials from the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO), John Power and Erica Kneipp to discuss some potential areas for collaboration.
Kneipp is the Research Director for the Human Health program at CSIRO (pronounced Si-ro). Her work encompasses infectious disease preparedness, innovative diagnostic solutions, and more. Meanwhile, Power leads the Regulated Biomanufacturing group in CSIRO with over 25 years of experience in the industry for the design and industrialization of manufacturing systems for vaccines and biotherapeutics in global markets.
“As two powerhouses in the bioindustry, we think that combining our countries' expertise in the bio-sector can create mutually beneficial partnerships for both parties involved,” said Kneipp.
Question: Can you introduce Australia's bio-industry and its unique strengths?
Power: Australia has a strong track record in early-stage research, strategy development, and clinical trials for developing new biotherapeutics. Subsequently, we then search for an appropriate manufacturer to conduct the license arrangement to help those ideas translate into potential new products. Besides CSL (Commonwealth Serum Labs, a leading Australian biotech firm), we do not have a lot of companies that have the critical mass to take products to market.
However, this is an intentional strategy on our part because we know immense resources are required to get a product registered, proven in clinical studies, and approved for manufacture.
Kneipp: Moreover, we've got a world-class system with very talented academic and clinical researchers working in tandem so you can run a multisite trial. We try to make this process easier for sponsors, investigators, and participants to reduce the start-up time during the recruitment and we also offer a diverse population for conducting clinical trials.
Q: What role does CSIRO play in this?
Kneipp: CSIRO is one of the world's largest multidisciplinary science and technology organizations with global hubs in six different countries. Using a “One Health” approach, we focus on prevention and resilience across the health continuum. We refer to our federal government as the commonwealth and thus it is named accordingly but our research institute is not linked to the British Commonwealth.
During the pandemic, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) engaged us to study the SARS-CoV-2 virus and we used our BSL4-rated facilities at the Australian Center for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) to conduct the preclinical trials on the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine. Subsequently, we shared the data which allowed AstraZeneca to take the vaccine to market.
We also champion research and manufacturing to accelerate the translation of drugs of little profitable interest, also known as orphan drugs.
Power: CSIRO also endeavors to work with inventors in an institution, university, small-medium enterprise (SME), or biotech start-up to develop a manufacturing strategy. We have pilot labs to help deliver a cohesive strategy by which products can be made in modern factories around the world. We also apply a similar process to take investigational materials into the clinical setting.
Q: What type of Korean collaborations are you interested in? On the topic of biomanufacturing and CEPI, I’m wondering if you also have partnerships with international organizations like the International Vaccine Institution (IVI).
Power: To my knowledge, we don’t have any partnerships with IVI and I think it’s because Australia is not yet a member. However, I’m interested in exploring this avenue to see what role CSIRO could play here.
Overall, the Korean and Australian governments have signed strategic cooperative agreements to collaborate more openly in areas of mutual interest so I think it only makes sense to strengthen links in the biotech field as well.
As a national science provider, we work with academic partners to guide the industrialization of their products. However, it’s not in CSIRO’s mandate to become a regular manufacturer regarding registration and manufacturing approvals. That's where companies like Samsung and other CDMOs in Korea, can potentially be future partners so we can guide technology transfers into these organizations or “hand off” a product that is showing success in the clinic.
Our organization partners seamlessly with both the private and public sectors on projects of varying complexity which can take several months or a few years to fully industrialize the product.
Kneipp: In this regard, we have a suite of programs that are designed to support SMEs in their technology transfers. Sometimes our researchers devise their innovative ideas, sometimes they leave us and spin off companies or conversely spin-in companies.
Due to our long-standing experience in clinical trials, and new clinical trial units on the horizon in Adelaide and Sydney, this is a big focus for us. Australia has been looking at what Korea has been doing over the years and we're keen to initiate multinational trials with Korea to bring our researchers together.
Additionally, we would like to understand the unique workforce challenges and exchanges to provide our officers with varied experiences in the industry so they can add this value back to our organization. Although we are an academic institution, our projects strive to meet industry needs and market trends.
Q: Could you explain some of your priority projects at CSIRO right now?
Kneipp: As a national science agency, we are working on several different missions simultaneously, but antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the main projects. We are creating a research and development (R&D) roadmap to stimulate product development. In this regard, we are exploring the use of phages as alternative treatments in the AMR space.
Power: For us, Covid is still a big part of the national research portfolio because it is becoming a forever virus so we are focused on developing manufacturing strategies for new antigens as boosters and monoclonal antibodies for Covid therapies and then using these lessons to prepare for the next pandemic.
Beside this, we are also working on anti-cancer biotherapeutics and devising strategies for good manufacturing practice (GMP) of our theragnostic products like antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) which can be labeled with a marker and used for diagnosis with imaging equipment and also as targeted radiotherapy in cancer.
Q: What are some short-, medium-, and long-term goals of your organization and how can Korea help achieve these goals?
Power: Immediately, the next step is understanding the landscape in Korea and then setting a framework to allow more detailed discussions about particular project opportunities and how support can be leveraged from one or both governments.
Kneipp: This delegation itself is very unique because we're a mix of multi-level government policymakers, reformers, scientists and manufacturers, academics, researchers, and administrators. We're striving to be open-minded and treating this trip as a recon mission to see if we can increase our presence in Korea’s bio-industry.
CSIRO was asked by Korea Bio, to facilitate and lead the Australian delegation which we're thrilled to do because as the national science agency, we can convene academics and industrialists together to represent our country.
I don’t think we've ever had discussions with Korea's equivalent to CSIRO but we'd like to change that with this delegation. In that regard, we have scheduled meetings with organizations like the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), the National Research Council of Science (NST), the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), and the Korea Institute of Toxicology (KIT) to initiate conversations with the relevant parties.
Likewise, Korea has shown interest in connecting with us as we have had a few recent exchanges in the bioindustry but would like to now formalize these relationships. We appreciate that Korea is a powerhouse in the biotech sector and we're here to determine how to collaborate more effectively.