QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

LIFE SCIENCES QUEENSLAND LTD LSQ is an opportunity for stakeholders to come together and cooperate to grow their businesses and help create a dynamic, internationally competitive and sustainable life sciences industry in Queensland, Australia. LSQ provides members with tools, services, market intelligence and access to an international network of life sciences organisations with the aim of identifying new business opportunities and accelerating business growth. LSQ is an industry-led vehicle, which promotes and supports all segments of the Queensland life science industry, to assist the growth of individual organisations and industry sectors, and build the profile, capacity and capability of the sector to help ensure long term economic, social and environmental benefits to Queensland has hosted many delegations from the Fraunhofer ITEM, including in October 2012 for the Translational Research Excellence Conference (TRX12). Queensland and German Life Sciences industries share a very important relationship, enabling each region to leverage and utilise the other’s strengths, expertise, resources and capabilities to provide world-class international research leading to the development of therapeutic products and devices designed to improve the lives of all people throughout the world.

This collaborative relationship not only benefits the two organisations involved, but also provides an important link between each region’s Life Sciences industries, enabling other organisations and institutes to establish working relationships between Germany and Queensland more easily. In 2009, the Fraunhofer Institute also signed a cooperative agreement with the Queensland Clinical Trials Network Inc (QCTN), a non-profit industry association of service providers. The agreement facilitates information and knowledge exchange in the field of life sciences, especially in the areas of translational research, clinical trials and pharmaceutical regulation. Such agreements and collaborations between Queensland and Germany encourage innovation, learning and discovery as well as building meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships for the future of each region’s Life Sciences Industry. FRAUNHOFER ITEM HANNOVER Research for human health is the focus of the Fraunhofer ITEM: both in aspects of preventive medicine – with studies and risk assessments in environmental and occupational toxicology and consumer protection – and with the development of diagnostic techniques and innovative therapy approaches – with investigations in drug research and development. Research activities and services range from studies in the areas of occupational and environmental toxicology and consumer protection to pre-clinical and clinical drug research and development, from allergy and asthma research to the assessment and registration of chemicals, biocides and pesticides. For more than 25 years, the Institute has been successfully engaged in contract research for customers from industry and public authorities. item.fraunhofer.de Above: the Queensland Institute of Medical Research building at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital campus at Herston. Image courtesy Tony Phillips via LSQ Above right: asthma and allergy research participants at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

Queensland and its members. Industry sub-sectors include: •

Human healthcare (pharmaceuticals or drug discovery, complementary medicines, functional foods/beverages, medical devices and diagnostics), Agricultural and environmental biotechnology, Marine biotechnology, and Industrial biotechnology, including bio-mining and bio-energy. Animal health,

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