Due for completion in 2028, the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator will be a globally significant hub for biomedical research, innovation, and translation in Sydney, Australia.
Currently in the construction phase, the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator (SBA) is a visionary partnership between the University of Sydney, Sydney Local Health District, and the NSW Government. The partnership brings together clinicians, researchers, academics, and industry to solve some of the world’s most complex health challenges. It will provide a compelling platform for international collaboration, offering partners opportunities to engage in joint research, clinical translation, and industry-led innovation.
When built and operational, the SBA will support innovative research, translation, and commercialisation, fast-tracking scientific discovery into better health outcomes. Capitalising on the University of Sydney’s international collaborations, particularly its longstanding partnership with Europe, the SBA will benefit significantly from existing relationships and collaborations as it works towards a vision closely aligned with the overarching direction of European framework programmes.
To find out more about the SBA and what it will do for Australia’s medical research landscape, The Innovation Platform spoke with Professor Victoria Cogger, Executive Director of the SBA.
Can you briefly summarise the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator and how it aims to boost research and innovation to tackle complex health challenges?
The SBA is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to establish a globally significant hub for biomedical research, innovation, and translation in the heart of Sydney – Australia’s largest city and a global gateway.
The A$780m partnership has at its epicentre a 36,000m² purpose-built world-class AI-enabled facility that will foster a collaborative ecosystem designed to fast-track scientific discovery into real-life health outcomes.
From 2028, the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator will span the University of Sydney’s Camperdown campus and the adjacent Royal Prince Alfred Hospital campus, creating a global concentration of biomedical research talent, facilities, and capabilities and the perfect conditions for bench-to-bedside translational research.
The SBA will be the cornerstone of the Sydney Health and Innovation Precinct, a node of Tech Central – Australia’s largest and most significant innovation district, supporting a A$42bn economy and 100,000 workers, and with more than 150 research institutes and centres of excellence.
Also key to the SBA’s success will be its active and embedded models of engagement with industry, start-ups, patient groups and other clinical and academic institutions. This includes meaningful clinician and consumer involvement to ensure real-world experience shapes both the problems addressed and the solutions developed.
This integrated model provides international partners with a unique environment for rapid clinical translation and real-world validation.
Drawing researchers from a wide range of disciplines, beyond medicine and science, the SBA recognises the crucial role that academic expertise and research – in areas ranging from engineering and law to humanities and the arts – can play in research discovery related to health and medicine.
How important is international collaboration for the project?
Europe is the University of Sydney’s leading source of research collaborations. Since 2016, the University has produced more than 34,000 co-authored publications with academics from European universities and institutions, chiefly in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
To date, the University of Sydney has committed more than A$2m in matched funding to our European partnerships. This supported our talented researchers in over 100 joint research projects, early-career mobility awards and collaborative workshops.
This ongoing collaboration and the deep exchange of talent, expertise, and ideas between the EU and Australia is critical to ensuring the SBA can attract, convene, and retain the world’s leading minds and resource the most impactful biomedical research and innovations, while supporting new and extended partnerships within Horizon Europe consortia and related programmes.
The Australian Government’s commitment to fast-track its association with Horizon Europe also opens the door to new and more robust opportunities for the SBA, particularly in innovation and commercialisation.
We look forward to the prospect of international partnerships around commercialisation – as a small market, Australia needs strong relationships with the EU and proactive and early engagement with regulatory bodies to help accelerate translation in a way that reduces risk, time and unnecessary costs to benefit patients globally.
How has the EU/Horizon Europe supported the project so far?
In conceptualising the SBA, our teams visited key EU accelerators and precincts – including the Karolinska Institute, and the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cambridge, Oxford, Kings College, and UCL – to draw inspiration and learn from established world-leading places.
A number of our researchers are already engaging with EU collaborators and in EU-funded research. For example, Professor Elizabeth New and Michael Kassiou, both in the School of Chemistry, have been funded by the European Commission.
Personally, I have worked with Horizon Europe on two separate programmes. In 2017, my team and I were part of a Research and Innovation Framework Programme, Innovative Training Networks (ITN)- DeLIVER, that contributed to our work on targeting medications to the liver. In 2021, we again partnered with the University of Tromso and others for the Horizon Europe – MSCA-2022-DN-01- ImAGE-D for the development of novel imaging modalities focused on uncovering the biology of ageing.
While the SBA itself has not yet held EU-branded project funding, it is perfectly positioned to align with the principles of Horizon funding as it builds directly on University of Sydney participation in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe collaborations across biomedical, clinical, and translational research – providing the partnerships, expertise, and international networks that underpin the SBA’s mission.
How will the further strengthening of EU-Australia relations benefit the SBA and the research it will support?
I commend the Australian Government on the announcement that it will fast-track its association with Horizon Europe. As part of the Group of Eight, the University of Sydney will contribute towards the association fee required to join the programme.
University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Mark Scott, said the move recognised the world-class quality of research already done by Australian universities, while enabling us to join our European counterparts and the best researchers around the globe in rising to address the world’s greatest challenges. He said: “These international networks and collaborations are critical in our race to deliver lifechanging research, often based on decades of fundamental and applied research, in partnership with industries and institutions.
“It places Australian researchers and businesses at the centre of a global programme for transformative research and will directly impact health, technology, sustainability, and national wellbeing.”
The SBA’s vision aligns closely with the overarching direction of European framework programmes, particularly in its emphasis on health as a major societal challenge and on translation as a core measure of impact. This includes a strong focus on collaborative research to address population health needs alongside mechanisms that support the commercialisation and scale up of innovation – principles that are embedded in the SBA’s mission to accelerate biomedical discovery from laboratory to clinic and market.
Looking beyond 2027, the anticipated successor to Horizon Europe presents a critical opportunity to sustain and deepen EU-Australia research collaboration. Australia’s association now will not only deliver immediate benefits through Horizon Europe but will also position Australian institutions, including the Sydney Biomedical Accelerator, as trusted, established partners in shaping and participating in the next EU Framework Programme. Early integration into European research networks, governance structures, and partnership ecosystems will ensure continuity of collaboration, enhance Australia’s influence in emerging priorities, and enable the SBA to remain embedded in long-term multinational research initiatives that extend beyond a single funding cycle.
Please note, this article will also appear in the 26th edition of our quarterly publication.
