Gene and cell medicine facility
Our researchers and clinicians have access to world-class facilities across our sites at Randwick and Westmead. We share these facilities with other organisations, including Sydney universities, medical research institutions and advanced health research translation centres.
The Gene and Cell Medicine Facility is a state-of-the-art cell manipulation and gene therapy formulation facility designed to meet the code of Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP).
The Facility’s primary purpose is to provide world class clean rooms for novel and ground-breaking cellular therapies that benefit children. This includes, but is not limited to, gene therapy clinical trials.
One of the key challenges in gene therapy is to safely repair or replace faulty genes with healthy ones, in a sufficient number of cells, to achieve therapeutic benefit. This involves the use of cutting-edge gene delivery technologies and manipulation of patient cells, which can only be done in highly specialised facilities such as these.
The Gene & Cell Medicine Facility is part of Sydney Cell and Gene Therapy (SGCT), which altogether has 11 clean rooms across the Westmead Research Hub. The three independent clean rooms at Kids Research meet the strict PICS Class B clean room standard and PC2 bio-containment requirements of the Gene Technology Act 2000.
Use of the Facility is open to both Hospital and industry-based researchers.