A research road map is critical

One of the most significant problems facing Australia right now is how we tackle the enormous task of moving from our current COVID-elimination strategy, with closed borders and ongoing lockdowns, to a living-with-COVID strategy of open borders and a return to the freedoms we once took for granted.

The Australian Government will tackle this with a four-phase action plan.

It got me thinking about the difficult problems we face in the Australian research and innovation sector.

Most scientists rely on taxpayer-funded government grants to carry out their research. An important question that we, as researchers and institutions, must ask ourselves is what do the public and their elected representatives expect in return?

There are two interlinked answers. The first is to do highly original research that drives forward our understanding of people and the world – from a microscopic level to a universal scale. The second is to take that new discovery and turn it into something useful for the community.

How we achieve this, depends on the type of research we conduct. In medical research, an important community impact is helping people live longer and healthier lives, by improving how we prevent, diagnose and treat disease.

The path to impact in medical research is most successful when we collaborate with industry partners, who can bring the specialist skills and less encumbered funding needed to turn discoveries into new medicines and healthcare products. This creates jobs, and, if successful, can lead to returns on investment that can drive further investment in research at universities and institutes, and grow companies to employ more people.

Australia is world-class when it comes to delivering high quality and original research. However, with a few exceptions, we are not as good at turning these discoveries into products with a real-world impact and flow-on effect to increase jobs and grow the economy.

This is a problem we have been aware of for decades, but solutions have evaded us.

What would a four-phase plan for Australian research and development look like?

Here are my musings.

Phase one: taking responsibility for impactful research

As we know from tackling COVID-19, to do something difficult requires someone to take responsibility. It is all too easy for researchers to view fundamental and original research as core business, but to view developing that discovery to make an impact for the community as ‘someone else’s job’. In my experience, the closer to the point of discovery the responsibility for creating impact lies, the more likely it is to happen.

Success requires both individual motivation and institutional commitment. We need institutional systems and supports that embrace risk and enable researchers to push forward by finding additional resources, identifying partners and managing collaborations and, importantly, knowing when to allow industry to drive development. Science is inherently risky – you cannot predict the outcomes and you don’t always get the result you are expecting. But without risk, there is no reward.?

Above: WEHI researcher Professor Don Metcalf AC (right) led 50 years of research to discover and develop colony stimulating factors for clinical use, research which has benefited tens of millions of people worldwide - including opera singer and cancer survivor José Carreras (left).

Phase two: incentivising researchers

If we want individual researchers to take responsibility for generating impact, then institutions and leaders need to provide incentives and create a culture that rewards researchers for their efforts. At WEHI, none of our senior researchers have tenure – we are all on five to seven-year contracts. Renewal of contracts is dependent both on contributions to original research, and its application.

Most universities and research institutes share profits only with inventors on patents. This limited approach neglects many researchers who do essential work advancing discoveries – for example creating the bedrock of knowledge on which a discovery is made, facilitating collaborations with industry and mapping out clinical trials.

At WEHI, we share 30 per cent of our commercial returns with a very broad group of researchers who have contributed to the success of a particular patent. We also recognise that every student and staff member is part of creating an entrepreneurial culture, so we share up to 20 per cent of our commercial returns evenly with them. WEHI retains 50 per cent of returns to reinvest in our research, as well as the innovative platforms and support systems that enable this work, such as the National Drug Discovery Centre and our on-site early learning centre.

Above: The National Drug Discovery Centre was supported by funding from the Australian and Victorian governments, as well as by investment from WEHI, which included royalty and philanthropic income.

Phase three: rewarding high-performing institutions?

Research organisations rely on public funding to exist. The public are therefore in a powerful position to influence behaviour. If the public, through their elected representatives, want both original research and community impact, then funding should be allocated to those institutions that deliver on those expectations. Expenditure on research and development in academic organisations in Australia totalled more than $12 billion in 2018, with governments contributing a substantial portion of that. This is a big lever.

Phase four: changing the way we fund research

Funding insecurity affects the culture of health and medical research, with hyper-competition for grants creating a highly fraught environment –?not one conducive to impactful discovery science.

In Australian universities and research institutes, public funding is largely awarded to individual projects and academics. The amounts are relatively small and, across the available schemes, only about one in 10 grants will be successful, with many excellent projects left unfunded. This creates a substantial barrier to productivity because researchers spend somewhere between a third and half of their time writing and reviewing grant applications, rather than doing creative research and developing their discoveries into something useful for the community.

Some of the most successful public and private research organisations, both in terms of fundamental discovery and innovative development, have been funded at an institutional level, rather than at the level of individual researchers. Examples include the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge, UK, where many of the secrets of DNA were discovered, and the Bell Labs, US, where the transistor was invented. If we want to be competitive on an international scale, Australia needs to consider this funding model

Above: Melbourne's Parkville Biomedical Precinct is home to many internationally recognised research organisations, universities and hospitals.

The community places an enormous amount of trust in medical research institutes to find the answers to complex health problems and help people live longer, healthier lives. By mapping out a long-term action plan for medical research, we are signalling to the public that we take this responsibility incredibly seriously.

With a clear forward plan and a vision for how we can achieve those actions, researchers will be in the best possible position to keep making the discoveries that improve human health.

This article was originally published in The Herald Sun on 8 August 2021.