Commercial links

The people behind APAF have all since gone on to bigger and better things. The core group left at the end of 1998 to set up the biotech company Proteome Systems, which is still going strong today, led by Jenny Harry. Some, like Mark Molloy, are now back in academia, as is Herbert. Others, like Brad Walsh, have set up their own private companies.

"All of the people in the group [at APAF] were being offered jobs elsewhere, and Keith knew that the key thing was to try to keep the group together," Herbert says. "We looked at getting a CRC and were defeated at the very last hurdle. At that point a lot of the groundwork had been done and we had so many commercial contacts that the idea was floated that we should put together a company, so we did. It started with four of us - me, Andrew, Nicki and Keith - and then Mark Wilkins came on board and then Jenny Harry, who was the last one of the founders."

Herbert admits it was a difficult time for all involved but APAF had been a somewhat commercial entity anyway. He still receives royalties for some of the technology he helped develop with Bio-Rad, including sample preparation kits and an isoelectric focusing instrument. He also helped with the initial development of Bio-Rad's IPGs.

There were two separate but linked goals in setting up Proteome Systems, he says. One was the continued development of the technology platform developed at APAF, which had the potential of being commercialised.

"The second aspect was to use that platform to look at diseases and apply it to biological and medical problems and either fund those ourselves or work with partners who wanted access to our technology platform. The company has really evolved into one that has a technology platform that it uses to do all of its proteomics research and effectively develop the outcomes of that into diagnostics."

Herbert worked with Proteome Systems for seven years before being lured back to the university sector by the University of Technology, Sydney. There is still an APAF/Proteome Systems link, however - Jenny Harry's sister Liz Harry is an associate professor at UTS' Institute for the Biotechnology of Infectious Diseases and was very keen to get proteomics started at the university.

Herbert now runs the Proteomics Technology Centre of Expertise, part of UTS's plan to establish a series of technologically focused core facilities.

"The university has been extremely supportive of the whole idea," he says. "We've had plenty of financial support from the university and have been able to buy most of the equipment that we've needed. The break in my link with Bio-Rad when I left Macquarie and up to now hadn't stopped me still talking to them, so when I joined UTS, Bio-Rad came on board as our industry partner. The uni saw that as a big plus, that we could have an industry partner. We act as a showcase facility for them and we do training courses, both here and overseas."