CSL told the Senate Inquiry into the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) in Melbourne today that it was strongly supportive of the new fund and saw it as an acknowledgement of the significant economic benefits that Australia derives from investment in medical research. CSL outlined two initiatives which could help Government to maximum the returns from the new funding in the MRFF.
By supporting researchers to take an idea to a candidate product, the MRFF could help recruit substantial, complementary research funding from the commercial sector as well as increasing the pool of sound research projects that firms like CSL can take forward to the later stages of development.
CSL’s Director of Research and Development, Dr Andrew Cuthbertson, said “CSL congratulates the Government for recognising the disproportionate productivity benefits that Australia derives from each dollar invested in medical research”. “Translational research is the leap from fundamental science to its practical application. Currently, not a lot of this occurs in Australian academia, and the vast bulk of the intellectual property from Australia’s world class medical research goes offshore at this stage or is not progressed” he said.
