{"id":680586,"date":"2026-05-19T10:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T10:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/680586\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T10:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T10:29:14","slug":"australian-pill-to-protect-against-radiation-could-be-lost-to-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/680586\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian pill to protect against radiation could be lost to the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. You\u2019re reading an excerpt \u2013 sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A world-first pill designed to protect soldiers, the public and cancer patients from radiation is just one of the innovations Australia could lose to other nations after the axing of a federal program which helped commercialise research.<\/p>\n

The government recouped $800 million<\/a> by cutting Australia\u2019s Economic Accelerator (AEA) program in the budget, and instead diverted funds to public science agencies including CSIRO and the National Measurement Institute.<\/p>\n

\"AA collaboration between Adelaide University and industry could lead to a drug that can protect the body from radiation.Aresna Villanueva<\/p>\n

The science sector has welcomed the agency funding, but warned it comes at the cost of the program which addressed a key weak spot: Australia\u2019s ability to capitalise on our discoveries<\/a> instead of bleeding technology and talent<\/a> overseas.<\/p>\n

The AEA began as a $1.6 billion program launched in 2023 to translate Australian university research into real-world use, for economic and social good.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the program gave $395,000 in seed funding<\/a> to The Daisy Project, an effort to make a drug that can protect the body from radiation.<\/p>\n

The Daisy Project\u2019s leader, Professor Christopher Sweeney, spent months alongside his colleagues and industry partners applying for a further $3.2 million grant from AEA to firm up an Australian manufacturing route. But the project is now in limbo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have developed a therapy which has the ability to protect civilians and military personnel from radiation exposure in a nuclear attack, as well as developing it as an anti-cancer agent,\u201d says Sweeney, a professor of medicine at Adelaide University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re ready to actually make the drug at scale to put this into patients for clinical trials.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drug is made from the feverfew flower. Within the daisy-like bloom, scientists discovered a potent compound called parthenolide, which has anti-inflammatory and cancer-busting effects.<\/p>\n

Sweeney and his colleagues created a derivative of the compound called DMAPT, which can be taken orally and is easily absorbed. In mouse studies, DMAPT shielded organs from the severe effects of radiation, including tissue fibrosis and reproductive damage.<\/p>\n

\"ProfessorProfessor Christopher Sweeney from Adelaide University with feverfew flowers.<\/p>\n

The researchers aim to craft the compound into a pill that offers multi-organ protection for people exposed to high levels of radiation, such as soldiers and astronauts.<\/p>\n

In the nearer term, the drug could be given to cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. In healthy cells, DMAPT triggers stress pathways to generate protective antioxidant proteins, bracing the body for the inflammation and DNA damage inflicted by radiation.<\/p>\n

But in cancer, the compound has the opposite effect<\/a>: DMAPT seems to shut down those same pathways in tumours, making cancerous cells more vulnerable to radiation.<\/p>\n

The result could be a drug that weakens aggressive tumours while guarding the rest of the body against nasty side-effects of cancer treatment.<\/p>\n

\"TestTest tanks for extracting the key compound from feverfew at Black Squid Distillery in the Barossa Valley.<\/p>\n

The US Food and Drug Administration and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the body which initiated America\u2019s Operation Warp Speed for the invention of COVID-19 vaccines, have endorsed the drug\u2019s development plan.<\/p>\n

The aim is to make the drug in Australia and export it to the world. A Barossa Valley company that\u2019s part of the project, Black Squid Distillery, invested in new equipment to extract the key compound from feverfew using ethanol.<\/p>\n

Sydney pharmaceutical company Abinito would take the resulting product and manufacture it at scale into a therapeutic drug, using a new and patented formulation.<\/p>\n

The researchers and industry partners laboured over their application to AEA to make the plan a reality, only to learn the entire fund had been axed ahead of the budget.<\/p>\n

They want to keep the project in Australia, but must now consider moving it to the US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were ready to launch if we got funded from the AEA,\u201d Sweeney said. \u201cThere is a real chance we\u2019ll actually have to take this offshore to other countries for manufacturing at a cheaper rate, potentially, and lose that sovereign capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Applications such as Sweeney\u2019s may not have been successful even if the AEA had maintained its funding, but what scientists are frustrated by is the mass cancellation of applications already written, submitted and vetted. Many groups, including Sweeney\u2019s, had already been interviewed by AEA application panels.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people are saying this was a massive waste of time \u2026 we could not remember such a case when the funding was cut at the stage when the grants were already submitted,\u201d said Ilya Shadrivov, a physics professor at the Australian National University.<\/p>\n

He had applied to the AEA to make a prototype of a new kind of battery which can translate excess renewable energy into hydrogen.<\/p>\n

The saga raises the question of whether Australian science is better off after the budget.<\/p>\n

The $387.4 million given to CSIRO and an increase to disbursement from the Medical Research Future Fund<\/a> were desperately needed, said Ryan Winn, chief executive of peak body Science & Technology Australia.<\/p>\n

But the loss of the AEA and other funding redirections and cuts, including a blow to environmental research programs, amounted to a loss of $1.5 billion in grants<\/a> across the sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been really a budget which gave with one hand and took from another. I think it\u2019s fair to say this budget creates a leaner, and probably a bit meaner, science system,\u201d Winn says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Australian Economic Accelerator was purely about partnering between universities and industry, and actually creating the commercialisation and translation we know we desperately need,\u201d he says, to compete with high-spending countries such as the US and Japan.<\/p>\n

In just-released analysis<\/a>, the Australian Academy of Science applauded measures including improving a tax incentive for businesses to invest more in R&D and implementing a National Resilience and Science Council, a recommendation of the recent Ambitious Australia report<\/a> on the research system.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

But the overall trajectory of national investment in research and development \u2013 which stands at 1.7 per cent of GDP, far below the OECD average of 2.7 per cent \u2013 has not manifestly improved.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe measures announced signal genuine commitment to reforming Australia\u2019s broken R&D system,\u201d academy president Professor Chennupati Jagadish said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, the $1.5 billion over the forward estimates for research and science agencies is funded by cuts to existing research programs, which does nothing to begin reversing the long-term decline in overall research investment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia\u2019s science system needed a step-change; what it has received is a starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n

A government spokesperson said total investment in research and development was projected to reach about $15.1 billion for 2025\u201326, acknowledged the \u201csignificant effort\u201d researchers had put into AEA applications and said the education department was providing universities with information on alternative programs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"AngusAngus Dalton<\/a> is the science reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-680586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}