Australia’s new ‘missing link’ lab to boost local vaccine capability

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research, has opened a new $23.1 million national lab in Melbourne that will bolster the nation’s ability to produce vaccines & drug treatments locally. Researchers at CSIRO’s National Vaccine and Therapeutics Lab will turn vaccine & drug candidates into products that can be manufactured in large quantities for clinical trials. The ability to do this within Australia, rather than needing to go overseas, has been the ‘missing link’ in the country’s biomedical science sector being able to produce vaccines & drugs. The new lab follows a successful pilot facility in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when CSIRO scaled up vaccine candidates that had been developed onshore as part of a national strategy to combat this emerging threat. The facility was completed with funding from the Federal and Victorian Governments & was officially opened on August 11, by Federal Minister for Industry and Science Edham Nurredin Husic.