Ten-year CRC for manufacturing regenerative therapies awarded $65 million

A Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) focussed on accelerating industrial-scale manufacturing of regenerative therapies has been awarded federal funding, with the Solutions for Manufacturing Advanced Regenerative Therapies (SMART) CRC to begin a ten-year term with a total of $238 million in commitments.

Industry minister Ed Husic announced $158 million in funding for three successful CRC applications on Thursday, with $65 million allocated to the University of Queensland-hosted SMART CRC.

Interim CEO of the SMART CRC and Professor at UQ’s School of Chemical Engineering, Simon Cool, bottlenecks in manufacturing were impeding access to curative regenerative therapies.

“There is a significant shortage of technical expertise in manufacturing, quality control, analytics, and process development, something that is standing in the way of transformative therapies benefitting Australians,” said Cool in a statement.

“The SMART CRC will directly target these gaps by harnessing the scientific and technological expertise of 63 partners and ensuring these next-generation treatments can be scaled up effectively, ready for use in the clinic.”

UQ said that projects supported by the SMART CRC will range from “products close to commercialisation to high-impact platform technologies”, and that it is expected to produce “an estimated $4.5 billion in economic value and 1500 skilled jobs”.

The CRC Program has run since 1990 and partners private companies with public researchers on projects designed to solve industry problems.   

The other two CRCs announced by Husic were the Care Economy CRC (focussed on aged care and awarded $35 million over ten years) and the Additive Manufacturing CRC ($58 million over seven years.)

Picture: supplied

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