The Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute is a $153 million investment in science that, when up and running and at full capacity, will become one of the largest regenerative medicine and stem cell research centres in the world.

Established through a joint venture between Monash University, which has committed over $100 million to the project, and the Victorian Government, which has thrown in another $35 million, with a further $15 million from the Federal treasury, the centre is an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), established 30-odd years ago to harness the scientific talent of the disparate continent.

The ARMI’s new deputy director, developmental biologist Professor Peter Currie, is understandably excited about his new challenge, which will see him (and his zebra fish) back in his home state after many years at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney. “These sorts of opportunities, to build an institute like this, of the scope and size that we are envisaging, do not happen every day,” Currie says.

The idea of ARMI started over a decade ago when internationally renowned muscle and stem cell biologist, Professor Nadia Rosenthal, first visited Australia from the US. “I was immediately struck by the place – I just loved it,” she says.

Rosenthal went on to establish several close ties here, with collaborations in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. The longest standing of these is with muscle biologist Professor Miranda Grounds at the University of Western Australia, where Rosenthal has spent significant periods of time since as a visiting professor.

What also became established over her first few trips to Australia was an idea for what would turn out to be one of Australia’s most ambitious and potentially prestigious new research ventures.

“During my early time in Australia and through talking with many different people, I was struck by the issues that Australia faced in terms of the brain drain and insufficient scientific opportunities here compared to other places such as the US and Europe,” she says.

These issues reminded Rosenthal of those faced by Europe in the 1970s, with our federation of states somewhat equivalent to the fiercely independent member countries of the EU. That continent addressed the problem at the time by setting up the now highly prestigious European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, and history shows that the EMBL model has worked well for the re-invigoration of European science.

One element of the EMBL model in particular has attracted both Rosenthal and Currie: the well-developed system of encouraging and retaining young scientists.