Joint Vision for a Healthy Future
Resource type: News
The Courier-Mail | [ View Original Source (opens in new window) ]
By Janelle Miles
If you build it, they will come. Queensland’s Translational Research Institute is still under construction but it’s already attracting plenty of interest from leading US medical researchers.
US philanthropist Chuck Feeney, who provided millions of dollars towards the project, toured the Brisbane site yesterday with chief executive Ian Frazer and world-recognised cancer researcher Susan Desmond-Hellmann.
Professor Desmond-Hellmann, was part of a delegation from the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) brought to Brisbane by Mr Feeney to foster collaboration between top US and Queensland researchers.
Prof Desmond-Hellmann, who is passionate about getting treatments from the laboratory to the bedside faster, said similar scientific questions were being approached by Australian and US researchers in “remarkably different ways”.
“I will go back home with some new ideas and some different approaches,” she said.
Both Prof Desmond-Hellmann and Prof Frazer praised Mr Feeney’s contribution, which amounts to more than $250 million in Queensland alone.
“The speed with which we’re increasing our ability to innovate and translate the science would not be happening without Mr Feeney,” Prof Desmond-Hellmann said.
“I predict millions of human beings are going to be better off as a direct result of his actions.
“I wish I could clone him.”
Translational Research Institute and Queensland University of Technology are Atlantic grantees.