New Zealand biotechnology is a developing, world-class industry. Find out more about the exciting work being done, and the diversity of different projects in this second of a 4-part series produced by NZBio.
See below for links to the other videos in this series:
- Biotechnology for a better future, Part 1
- Biotechnology for a better future, Part 3
- Biotechnology for a better future, Part 4
This clip was produced in conjunction with NZBio.
Transcript
Narrator Other groups are investigating how our own immune response might be used to create vaccines to prevent diseases.
Joanna Kirman (Malaghan Institute of Medical Research) At the Malaghan Institute the work I am involved in is, basically, aiming to get vaccines implemented for three diseases. These are tuberculosis, respiratory syncytial virus and rotovirus. Two to 3 million people die every year from TB, but in NZ it infects about 1 New Zealander a day on average, and of interest for us is the fact that there is a lot of multi drug resistance strains of TB that are being introduced into NZ.
Narrator: The Malaghan Institute is also running a Melanoma Vaccine Programme.
Julie Walton Malaghan Institute of Medical Research For this project we are making vaccines for patients from their own tumours and from their own blood cells. Basically we’re activating the immune system in the lab and then giving it back to the patient, which produces and immune response which is able to fight the cancer.
Narrator Other companies are using novel techniques to produce drugs for cancer treatment. And experts from several different fields are working together to determine how foods and food components affect our health at the molecular level. Research by the Nutrigenomics group aims to help us select foods that enhance our personal health, as well as providing exciting growth opportunities for our food industries.