Covid-19 vaccine: New Queensland centre to test RNA technologies

Scientists involved in an Australian COVID-19 vaccine have set up a proving centre for breakthrough RNA and DNA technologies.

Group leader at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology Trent Munro. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Scientists involved in developing an Australian vaccine for COVID-19 have set up a new proving centre for breakthrough RNA and DNA technologies that were turbocharged by the pandemic.

The pilot facility at the University of Queensland will produce the building blocks for mRNA vaccines and cancer therapies, bridging the “missing link” between the lab and manufacturing to allow the promising medicines to be made in Australia.

The project, co-funded by the federal government, involves some of the researchers who got UQ’s molecular clamp COVID vaccine into human trials before a glitch unrelated to performance forced it to be scrapped last December.

It will link in with a program in Victoria kickstarted by a $50m capital injection from the state government last week to make at scale the new-generation RNA vaccines which have excelled against the virus.

The need for onshore production has been underlined by the difficulties the federal government has had sourcing extra imports of the mRNA-based Pfizer jab, a setback that slowed the national vaccine rollout.

Trent Munro, project leader of the molecular clamp team and a group leader at UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology which will host the new centre, said it would be a stepping stone for research to advance beyond the lab.

“What we are interested in is trying to fill that gap for researchers who are trying to build value for their ideas and look at what those next steps are to creating translational outcomes,” Professor Munro said.

“We have got a critical mass here in our ability to do that with proteins, what we are able to do with this investment is support people to do the same thing with … these DNA and RNA products, with a focus on potential mRNA-based vaccines.

“They are one of the key elements that might be part of the future therapeutics and vaccine landscape.” The chief executive of partner agency Therapeutic Innovation Australia, Stuart Newman, said the UQ facility would make the high-quality and highly pure nucleic acids in RNA and DNA to support the work of molecular scientists.

He said of the $2.2m seed money: “This investment complements recent investments in later stage, large-scale mRNA manufacturing as well as TIA’s own ongoing investment in biologics production to support R&D.”

The big advantage of mRNA vaccines is they are simpler to make and, in the case of the COVID jab, more effective than existing processes including the protein-based molecular clamp developed at UQ.

This was to have been a pillar of Australia’s rollout until the candidate vaccine delivered false-positive readings for HIV in the phase-1 clinical trial in Brisbane, leading it to be pulled.

“The use of proteins as drugs has been the biggest revolution in biotech for the last 20 or 30 years,” Professor Munro told The Australian.

“That’s really been the huge step forward. But the issue with those is they are incredibly complicated to make and very time consuming.

“And if you make even the smallest change in the sequence of that protein it becomes a completely different molecule, it will behave in different ways. Just very complex chemistry.

“But big benefit of RNA, DNA processes is that you have got a lot more flexibility in the underlying sequence and the molecules should behave in a fairly predictable manner. You are seeing that in COVID with companies like Pfizer and Moderna.”