Queensland COVID-19 research
This page of Queensland’s research related to the COVID-19 pandemic is compiled from information provided by Queensland universities and research institutes.
While many of our researchers are working on potential vaccines, treatments and other medical interventions, other researchers are applying their expertise to other impacts of the pandemic upon our economy and other aspects of society. The data includes immediate research activity, recent relevant work, proposed research (subject to available funds) and other responses using the resources and expertise of our research organisations.
Listing 1 matching response out of 149 total responses.
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Ancient Australian plant may help in production of COVID-19 vaccine April 2020
QUT researchers are embedded in an international team of scientists developing technologies to produce large amounts of low-cost vaccines. Professor Peter Waterhouse has developed a roadmap for biotechnologists who are turning to the new technique of producing antibodies, vaccines and therapeutics, in plants - biofactories. Plants can be grown in large amounts using simple agricultural technologies, that are within reach of developing countries that may lack sophisticated protein production methods. In this “molecular farming” discipline, biotechnologists can alter the DNA instructions in a plant to make it produce the antibody or vaccine in the cells and sap of its leaves and the plant does the rest. Professor Waterhouse said several international biotech companies have already been given fast-tracked access to the entire chromosome-level genome sequence of the Australian-native plant Nicotiana benthamiana. QUT have made this previously unpublished information available to any team working on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic to allow them to ‘tweak’ the genome to produce better quality vaccines and therapeutics. The plant is being used all over the world as the vaccine plant biofactory of choice and the genome sequencing has been led by Professor Waterhouse in partnership with the European Horizon 2020 Newcotiana consortium.
#Bioeconomy
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Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy
Queensland University of Technology - Contact details
- Prof Peter Waterhouse
peter.waterhouse@qut.edu.au
+61 7 3138 7793 - Collaborations
- European Horizon 2020 Newcotiana consortium
Other Queensland COVID-19 initiatives
- Queensland Government
- Coronavirus (COVID-19) business assistance finder
- Life Sciences Queensland
- Life Sciences Queensland joins the data-powered alliance to stop COVID-19
Key international COVID-19 initiatives
- CORD-19 (COVID-19 Open Research Dataset)
- Free database of 130,000 plus COVID-19 open research papers