Institute for Molecular Bioscience

Institute for Molecular Bioscience We harness nature to discover cures for a better world Our vision is to create a world with a cure for every disease.

We harness our knowledge of nature to create sustainable cures for diseases that plague people, animals and plants. Our researchers use Australian venoms, plants and soils to stop superbugs in their tracks, to create better cancer treatments, to ensure patients survive strokes and heart attacks, to solve inflammatory diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and to develop environmentally friendly and effective pesticides. We are based at The University of Queensland in Brisbane/Meanjin, Australia.

Today, IMB is delighted to welcome Professor Dame Carol Robinson and Professor Simon Newstead from the Kavli Institute f...
06/02/2026

Today, IMB is delighted to welcome Professor Dame Carol Robinson and Professor Simon Newstead from the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at the University of Oxford.

Their visit marks the beginning of a new partnership built on strong relationships, shared strengths and a commitment to collaborative, interdisciplinary science. By bringing people together across institutions and career stages, the partnership creates new opportunities for research collaboration, researcher mobility and training pathways across areas including brain health, infectious disease, antimicrobial resistance and next-generation biomaterials.

We look forward to the exciting opportunities this collaboration brings.

Picture 1: Professor Simon Newstead, David Phillips Chair of Molecular Biophysics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford; Professor Dame Carol Robinson, Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry and Director, Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, University of Oxford & Professor Ian Henderson, Executive Director, Institute for Molecular Bioscience.

Picture 2: Professor Sue Harrison, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) & Professor Dame Carol Robinson, Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry and Director, Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, University of Oxford

06/02/2026

Clocking in! reveals how your cells run rockstar shifts (even when you're sleeping) ⭐

Research from Dr Meltem W., Dr Benjamin W. and Prof. Frederic Gachon reveals the circadian “schedule” that orchestrates your liver’s daily rhythm of protein production and export. Just like a postal centre, millions of liver cells clock on and off each day, packaging and sending out proteins that regulate metabolism, inflammation and energy balance. But they don’t work flat‑out 24/7; their activity is tightly timed by the body’s internal clock and by when (and how much) we eat.

📦 The team found key components of the liver’s secretory machinery (the molecular "conveyor belts" that fold and ship proteins) switch on and off across the day/night cycle, fuelled by glycogen‑derived sugars.

⏱️ Why does this matter? Time and metabolism are deeply intertwined — understanding these natural rhythms gives us a baseline for what happens when timing cues go awry (think irregular sleep or disrupted eating), and could guide new time-specific therapies, nutrition strategies, and drug-delivery approaches.

This research demonstrates that your body doesn't just keep the score; it keeps the time (even when you don’t!) and working with that rhythm could change how we eat, test, and treat disease.

Read more here 👉 https://news.uq.edu.au/2026-02-tick-tock-how-shift-work-and-irregular-eating-impacts-your-liver-body-clock

IMB helps bold ideas grow from belief to scale 🌱 A spark of inspiration won Dr. Melanie Oey the 2021 Ignite Innovation S...
05/02/2026

IMB helps bold ideas grow from belief to scale 🌱

A spark of inspiration won Dr. Melanie Oey the 2021 Ignite Innovation Showcase, a philanthropically-funded prize that would later support her winning pilot data in the following year's IMB–Inflazome Translational Award, for her use of in wound dressings.

This triumph would lay the ground for securing a Research Grant, enabling Melanie to step beyond the lab and work alongside industry, transforming early-stage research into products designed to scale, partner, and deliver real-world impact. That translational mindset has now been recognised at a national level, with Melanie's recent award of an Australia’s Economic Accelerator Ignite grant. With AEA funding, and industry partners and her team is able to support their highly innovative work in cultivated meat, using breakthrough algae-based media recycling and co-cultivation to help make cheaper, greener and commercially viable.

IMB gave her ideas the conditions to grow — now Melanie has cultured innovation that’s primed to thrive.

Professor Glenn King and his team have been selected as the 2025 recipients of the  SyncroPatch 384 Research Grant 🎉The ...
03/02/2026

Professor Glenn King and his team have been selected as the 2025 recipients of the SyncroPatch 384 Research Grant 🎉

The SyncroPatch 384 Research Grant is awarded through Nanion Technologies via a competitive application process, open to researchers worldwide.

How do cancer-fighting nanoparticles actually reach cancer cells? 🔬IMB researchers from the Parton Lab are tackling a ma...
01/02/2026

How do cancer-fighting nanoparticles actually reach cancer cells? 🔬

IMB researchers from the Parton Lab are tackling a major challenge in nanomedicine: designing nanoparticles that selectively kill cancer cells, and understanding how nanoparticles move through the body to reach them.

In two new ACS Nano studies, the team developed “caveospheres”—tiny drug carriers that can be directed to cancer cells—and uncovered how nanoparticle size affects their ability to move out of blood vessels and into surrounding tissues.

Together, this research helps bridge laboratory discovery with future cancer treatments. Learn more about the science behind smarter cancer therapies at the links below:

ℹ️ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.5c11452
ℹ️https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.5c21042

29/01/2026

Antibiotics revolutionised medicine, but their overuse is driving antimicrobial resistance, prompting the World Health Organisation to rank among the world’s most serious public health and development challenges.

Enter IMB's antibiotic hunter Professor Mark Blaskovich, pushing to create stronger treatments capable of outsmarting an ever‑evolving wave of resistant pathogens.

Listen to Prof. Blaskovich talk being on the frontline of drug discovery with ABC Radio National 👉 https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/changing-australia-professor-mark-blaskovich-antibiotic-hunter/106272560

Congratulations Prof. Mark Blaskovich 🎉Professor Blaskovich has been selected for e‑ASIA 2025 Joint Research Program, re...
28/01/2026

Congratulations Prof. Mark Blaskovich 🎉

Professor Blaskovich has been selected for e‑ASIA 2025 Joint Research Program, recognising his research and focus on Infectious Diseases and Immunology in the field of Health Research.

The e‑ASIA program brings together funding agencies from across East and Southeast Asia to support internationally coordinated, multilateral research. With the project set to commence in 2026, Professor Blaskovich will join a multinational research team; this collaboration model is designed to accelerate innovation, strengthen regional research capacity, and address shared health and societal challenges.

A remarkable milestone, we would once again like to congratulate Mark on this achievement as a reflection of his academic excellence and ability to drive research that shapes policy, and improves global health outcomes.

The Aus/UK Biobank Research Symposium is happening here next month!From 11–13 February 2026,   will become the hub for w...
27/01/2026

The Aus/UK Biobank Research Symposium is happening here next month!

From 11–13 February 2026, will become the hub for world‑leading genomics, epidemiology, and health‑data science as researchers from across Australia and the UK come together at The University of Queensland , St. Lucia campus.

Register now so you can be part of the action, including:

🔍 Cutting‑edge insights powered by UK Biobank data
🗣️ Talks from leading Oxford and UQ researchers including IMB's own Prof. Naomi Wray
🧬 Networking with the global research community

Follow the link today to secure your spot (and book a seat in the pre-symposium workshops) 👉 https://ausukb.org

Registrations close 13 February.

🐸 Cane toad in your backyard? Here’s how science is fighting back.With warm, wet weather driving cane toad numbers up, Q...
26/01/2026

🐸 Cane toad in your backyard? Here’s how science is fighting back.

With warm, wet weather driving cane toad numbers up, Queenslanders are being urged to take action.

When Professor Rob Capon and his team at UQ uncovered how cane toad tadpoles are drawn to cane toad toxins, they turned that insight into a powerful solution. The result: an IMBUQ-designed tadpole lure that attracts and removes thousands of cane toads before they reach adulthood.

Now, through Watergum’s Great Cane Toad Bust, communities are helping put this science into action. Collected cane toads are humanely euthanised and used to produce the lures — targeting the pest species at its most destructive life stage, whilst leaving native frogs untouched.

With a population boom underway and each toad capable of laying up to 35,000 eggs, timing matters.

For the full story (and to support your local waterways) read here 👉https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/queenslanders-urged-to-join-cane-toad-crackdown-20260119-p5nv6m.html

  is helping to kickstart Australia’s innovation engine into a higher gear ⚙️We're proud to announce that Dr. Melanie Oe...
23/01/2026

is helping to kickstart Australia’s innovation engine into a higher gear ⚙️

We're proud to announce that Dr. Melanie Oey's "Circular, Sustainable Bioeconomy – Transforming Cultivated Meat Production with Cost-Effective Amino Acids from Microalgae" and Dr. Christian Nefzger's "Next-generation Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cells: enhancing manufacturing consistency and therapeutic durability via stress mitigation and exhaustion control" have been awarded funding via the latest round of Australia’s Economic Accelerator (AEA) Ignite program.

🌱 Melanie's highly innovative work into lab‑grown meat focuses on cell culture, tissue engineering, and sustainable biotechnology, using a breakthrough algae‑based media recycling and co‑cultivation method. AEA's support represents the resources to scale and speed up the development for cheaper, greener algae‑assisted cultivated meat.

🧬 Christian's research studies how and why our cells change as we age, uncovering the molecular “switches” that drive cells from youthful, healthy states into age‑related decline. By mapping changes across many cell types and testing ways to reset or redirect them, his group aims to find new strategies to restore cell function and improve tissue health — and with AEA's funding, could look at upgrading CAR T therapy so more patients benefit.

Congratulations again Melanie and Christian on this well‑deserved recognition of your visions, expertise, and impact your respective work will deliver.

Read more about this research boost here 👉https://news.uq.edu.au/2026-01-uq-secures-7m-innovate-industry-across-energy-agricultural-health-and-tech

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Our Story

IMB is a multidisciplinary life sciences research institute. Our scientists use world-leading infrastructure to drive discoveries from genome to drug design, disease discovery application and sustainable futures. Our research is framed through centres focused on superbugs, pain, heart disease, inflammation, solar biotechnology and the genomics-disease interplay.