Australian Stem Cell Centre to Get an Extreme Makeover. (March 20, 2009)

In today's Science Elizabeth Finkel reports from Melbourne: "The Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC), a controversial experiment in speeding the commercialization of stem

 cell research, is slated for a radical overhaul".

The centre, founded in 2002 has so far received $75 million. The former CEO, Stephen Livesey, envisioned a model in which products developed by the centre would fully fund its activities after 2011. To Alan Trounson, founder of the centre, the time frame was unrealistic and he plumped for "research excellence" and argued that in due course the profits would come as a result.

Livesey won the day, Professor Trounson resigned, and accepted the leadership of California's multibillion dollar stem cell program. However, ASCC continued to be dogged by infighting and as Ms Finkel notes: "last August after a government review criticized ASCC's business plan, Livesey was sacked and the board purged."

Then in October Andrew Elefanty and David Haylock were appointed to co-chair a committee to develop a new plan of research and development. Depending on government reaction ASCC will either obtain an additional two years of public funding or go begging.

The new committee have scrapped the former management's top-down approach -- particularly its power to design projects and decide who should work with whom -- and Andrew Elefanty  told Ms Finkel: "That's not the way collaborations work best. Right from the beginning, we were bleating: 'You can't force researchers to get into bed together.'" A point Senator Carr might consider sometime or other as he dreams of hubs and rimless spokes.

According to Ms Finkel's report in Science

Under a revised business plan that ASCC expects to deliver to the government by the end of April, ASCC would focus on licensing key technologies developed by the center, such as Haylock and Susie Nilsson's artificial niches for multiplying adult stem cells. ASCC would abandon attempts to commercialize a blood-cell product--the Holy Grail from its inception but a strategy that reviewers say was unattainable by 2011.

Beyond July 2011, ASCC would cease conducting its own research. Instead, it would provide services such as stem cell cultivation and commercialization expertise, with an eye toward joining the ranks of 12 other national infrastructure facilities. Its 130 scientists, meanwhile, would stay with their home institutions and seek research funding from traditional sources.

As matters stand, the question of public finding will be decided by June.