Exhibitors on the Australian Pavilion at BIO 2008 in San Diego

Matt Padula is part of a team at UTS that is using de novo peptide sequencing of the proteins and enzymes in a common tick to look for candidate antigens for a potential vaccine against one of Australia's deadliest parasites.

The successful projects under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) have been announced, including the establishment of a national mouse phenomics network, a plant phenomics network and a national medical imaging facility.

The Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF) is gearing up to launch its new Biomarker Discovery Laboratory and is already on the verge of signing a pharmaceutical company partner for a project.

Proteome Systems (ASX:PXL) has reported a half-year loss before tax of AUD$14.2 million, and with cash of only $11.6 million at December 31. the company is watching its pennies extremely carefully.

The Australian Proteome Analysis Facility, headquartered at Sydney's Macquarie University, is to team up with global life science supplier Qiagen in a AUD$1m research project to develop more efficient ways of removing high-abundance proteins from serum samples.

The Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF) has teamed up with Californian proteomics company LumiCyte (LCI) to further develop LCI's recently launched STS biochip platform.

Sydney-based proteomics company Proteome Systems (ASX:PXL) has released a standalone software package for proteomics research and analysis, Version 3.0 of BioinformatIQ. Its first customer was the Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF), Australia's Major National Research Facility for functional proteomics .

Australia is home to a thriving and dynamic biotechnology industry with a firm footing in the world-class research base found in the universities and research institutions 'Down Under'.

In the lead-up to the 2004 Lorne Protein, Cancer and Genome conferences, we continue our series of articles previewing some of the potential highlights at the events.

Proteomics. It's often touted as being the next revolution in biotechnology, the key to understanding biological pathways and disease states, a force that is driving research forward with an explosion of new technologies. But is identifying and describing the proteins of the human body providing the answers scientists and drug companies are after?