Microba Life Sciences Limited announced that $2.92m in funding has been awarded by the Medical Research Future Fund to support Microba and the QUT Centre for Microbiome Research (CMR) to isolate and characterise thousands of new species from the human microbiome to establish a world-leading human microbiome biobank - the Australian Human Microbiome Biobank (AHMB). The human microbiome represents a rich biological resource, but ability to isolate, grow and characterise most microorganisms in the laboratory remains limited. This is a major obstacle in microbiome research and therapeutic development, as culturing individual species is critical for dissecting microbial mechanisms underpinning human health and disease.

In the MRFF funded program, QUT in collaboration with Microba will overcome this obstacle by building Australia's first atmosphere-controlled, high-throughput cultivation platform, which integrates novel methods in spectral flow cytometry and metagenomics. This innovative approach will be applied to a diverse range of microbial communities throughout the human body, including the gut, skin, vaginal and oral microbiome, resulting in the world's most comprehensive biobank of its kind. The program will be led by CMR Director Professor Gene Tyson at QUT, and human microbiome samples will be analysed using Microba's world leading metagenomic technology to identify species of interest for targeted research.

The Company considers that the QUT and Microba collaboration is material and price sensitive for the following reasons. The grant will fund the establishment of the AHMB asset led by QUT, and Microba is expected to have commercial access as the lead commercial partner. The commercial value of that asset based on the MRFF funding and in-kind investment to establish the AHMB, is expected to be approximately $3m.

The AHMB has the potential to support the Company's current therapeutic programs in inflammatory bowel disease, immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases which are critical to the Company, as well as future potential programs.