Marine Pharmacology in Australia. The Roche Research Institute at Dee Why, New South Wales, 1974–81

Ian D. Rae

doi:10.1071/CH10073

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Marine Pharmacology in Australia. The Roche Research Institute at Dee Why, New South Wales, 1974–81

Ian D. Rae ^A

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^A Honorary Professorial Fellow, School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne, Vic. 3010, Australia. Email: iandrae@bigpond.com

Australian Journal of Chemistry 63(6) 855-861 https://doi.org/10.1071/CH10073
Submitted: 10 February 2010 Accepted: 19 February 2010 Published: 11 June 2010

Abstract

Hoffmann-La Roche supported the work of University of Queensland zoologist Robert Endean in the late 1960s, but the company’s deepening interest in the prospect of ‘drugs from the sea’ led them to establish the Roche Research Institute of Marine Pharmacology (RRIMP) at Dee Why, New South Wales. It was headed by Dr Joe Baker, an Australian organic chemist who had researched marine natural products. RRIMP took advice from several influential advisers, and Baker recruited chemists, pharmacologists, microbiologists, and marine biologists. Despite the conjecture, raised in some quarters, that RRIMP was established to mute the Australian government criticism of the pricing of Roche’s most famous product, Valium, I believe that the research venture was a genuine attempt to find lead compounds in organisms from Australian waters with a view to the development of new drugs. Changes in the research directions taken by Hoffmann-La Roche resulted in the closure of RRIMP in mid-1981, before any such success could be claimed for the Dee Why operation. RRIMP scientists, an elite but suddenly redundant group, secured positions in other Australian laboratories.

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a more extended account that appeared in the journal Historical Records of Australian Science, published by CSIRO Publishing for the Australian Academy of Science.^[⁴²^] I am grateful for the assistance provided by many people: librarians and archivists, present and past staff of Hoffmann-La Roche, and former RRIMP employees. Fig. 1 was kindly provided by Professor Mary Garson, University of Queensland.

References

Marine Pharmacology in Australia. The Roche Research Institute at Dee Why, New South Wales, 1974–81

Abstract

Acknowledgements

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