Bridging the valley of death

Professor Shaun Jackson is calling on the Australian Government to establish a Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) clinical development fund to support the early clinical development of breakthrough medical devices and therapies.

Professor Jackson sees this as a solution to navigating the ‘valley of death’, a term used to describe where new innovations are deemed ‘too early’ for sophisticated investment and ‘too late’ for further support from the Government.

The USA is typically able to avoid this pitfall due to the availability of business angels, venture capital investors and government granting schemes that support pre-clinical and early phase clinical trials. This supports research discoveries through commercialisation and, ultimately, to the patient.

Unfortunately in Australia, there is a significant funding gap, which essentially means that Australian researchers successfully make discoveries, but have difficulty commercialising them. Thus, success stories in the Australian biotech industry are few and far between.