The following article appeared in The Courier-Mail newspaper on Saturday 14th May 2005. The article interviews Professor James Dale, Farmacule's Managing Director, on QUT's plant biotechnology R&D program for tobacco. Farmacule has an exclusive right to commercialise QUT's research on the utilisation of tobacco as a biofactory for important medical compounds.

Queensland University of Technology news release

13/05/05

Tobacco which is currently a health villain among crops is on the verge of being converted into a health giving crop through advances in biotechnology, according to a leading Queensland researcher.

QUT's Professor James Dale said: "Tobacco has excellent characteristics which make it very well suited to the production of higher value compounds such as medical proteins.

"Such proteins are already close to commercialisation," he said.

"This essentially takes tobacco from a crop with a very poor health reputation to one of major benefit in the health sector; quite a turnaround," Professor Dale said.

Professor Dale will join Associate Professor Grant Daggard from the University of Southern Queensland at a forum in Toowoomba on Monday, May 16 on Smart Industrial Crops: New opportunities for Queensland Agriculture.

Professor Dale is the Director of Research within the Faculty of Science, Queensland University of Technology. He has been involved in agricultural research for more than 25 years.

Professor Daggard is Head of the Department of Biological and Physical Sciences within the Faculty of Sciences at USQ and is involved in a number of research programs within the USQ Centre for Rural and Environmental Biotechnology (CREB) in the area of plant biotechnology.


Date: Monday, 16 May
Time: 5pm - 7pm
Venue: USQ: Allison Dickson Lecture Theatre (Ring Road), West Street, Toowoomba
The moderator will be local ABC Rural reporter Alice Plate. Admission is free.