Team receives VC Award for Research Enterprise

Professor Marcel Nold

A research team led by Professor Marcel Nold from Hudson Institute and the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health (SCS) has received Monash University's Vice Chancellor's Award for Research Enterprise in recognition of their collaboration with pharmaceutical company Roche to develop better treatments for a range of inflammatory diseases.

Neonatologist and immunologist Prof Marcel Nold from the Department of Paediatrics is collaborating with Associate Professor Claudia Nold, pharmacist and immunologist, Hudson Institute, and Professor James Whisstock and Dr Andrew Ellisdon, protein biochemists and molecular biologists from the Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI).

“We have made groundbreaking discoveries on signalling mechanisms of anti-inflammatory mediators, whose immense potential benefit for millions of patients worldwide with a broad spectrum of diseases was immediately recognised by Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd (Roche) of Basel, Switzerland, and by the venture capital-backed Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF),” Prof Nold said.

“To advance our team’s innovations and pertinent IP along the drug development pathway towards the first-in-man stage, Roche has engaged in a multi-million dollar collaboration.”

To achieve a similar goal for a second innovation, the team joined forces with Professor Eric Morand, clinician-scientist and Head, SCS, and founded a company that is supported by the MRCF.