AFTER 14 years of operation there’s a ‘coming of age’ looming for the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research.
WAIMR will move into two state-of-the-art facilities in 18 months’ time, currently under construction at the Fiona Stanley Hospital site and Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital’s QEII medical centre, which will house about 1,000 people at the state’s medical research frontline.
WAIMR will share the new facilities – collectively worth $200 million – with researchers from The University of Western Australia and several specialised research institutes to form the state’s premier medical research facilities.
Director Peter Klinken and deputy director Peter Leedman founded WAIMR in 1998 with the support of (then) Wesfarmers chairman Harry Perkins.
“The goal was for WAIMR to try and bring together as many disparate research groups as possible, and when these buildings are complete that is what is going to happen,” Professor Klinken told WA Business News.
The past six years spent managing the design and construction of the new WAIMR facilities have been a source of exhilaration, excitement and exhaustion for Professor Klinken.
Though when asked if he feels satisfied with what has been achieved so far, the biochemist by trade is cautious in his assessment.
“At this stage I don’t have a sense of pride. I have a sense of being really busy and wanting to get the job done. We are well on the way, but there isn’t a sense that we have achieved our goal,” Professor Klinken said.
“I feel pleased with the progress we have made … but at the moment it is like footy teams eyeing their ultimate goal. Until you get there you don’t take your eye off the ball.”
Both facilities will have direct links between clinical and laboratory research facilities and the hospital, a connection Professor Klinken said would lead to a more rapid translation of discoveries from the bench into the bedside.
WAIMR is also a year on from establishing WA’s first phase-one clinical trial facility through its subsidiary Linear Clinical Research, which allows for primary drug testing and is attracting the big US-based pharmaceutical companies as clients.
With the state government and UWA’s combined contribution of $100 million to the projects, and contributions from the federal government, Lotterywest and The McCusker Foundation, WA is leading the way in terms of health sector investment and comparable commitment to collaborative medical research.
“We see this as a wonderful opportunity because of course you have the restructuring of the entire health system, so this is where research really can get totally embedded and integrated into the delivery of better health for the community, and also to be deeply embedded in education for the next generation of doctors and researchers,” Professor Klinken said.
When it comes to competition in a field like medical research where the ultimate reward of cure can have global ramifications, Professor Klinken said straddling the fine line between collaboration and competition was important.
“It is a question of what level you start competing. In my view in a place like WA, we really need to be working together as much as possible so that we can compete at an international level and make discoveries that will be of international significance,” he said.
“To me the game is not here within WA, the game is global.”
Professor Klinken said the institute was thankful for the ongoing support of founding partner Wesfarmers – and Michael Chaney and Richard Goyder in particular.
He refers to WAIMR’s funding model as one of ‘plurality’, and believes the institute wouldn’t exist without the model that incorporates corporate, state and federal government, university and private philanthropic support with affiliations with other medical research outfits and hospitals.
Professor Klinken said his strong connection to his work was what drove him to achieve the initial $25 million capital raising and what continued to drive him in obtaining funding for WAIMR.
“Over the last year a number of people have come up to me and said, ‘I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for medical research’. That automatically puts shivers down your spine,” he said.
“When I talk to our researchers I say we have a real responsibility to do our work, to do it as quickly as we can and as well as we can. It is something you don’t take lightly.”
