Probing Biosystems is a multi-year investment between CSIRO and our partners to develop innovative platforms that enable real-time interrogation of living biological systems in order to extract meaningful and actionable information about their health and well-being.

The Challenge

A key requirement in the advance towards precision health and medicine is our ability to monitor, in real time, the many complex physiological processes occurring within the human body. These processes can be early warning signs of injury or disease. The ability to detect subtle changes in physiological function, disease-specific biomarkers, or exposure to harmful pathogens enables the earliest of interventions, ensuring life quality keeps pace with life expectancy.

The Probing Biosystems Future Science Platform (FSP) has been established to tackle these challenges. Probing Biosystems is a collection of 13 projects set to revolutionise the healthcare and biosecurity of the nation through the development of medical devices and model systems to obtain real-time information about health and well-being. CSIRO’s multidisciplinary teams are working with industry and academic partners on research leading to the provision of health and medical interventions that are timely, customised and highly specific. These projects are being developed within four research themes: Health Surveillance, In vitro Diagnostics, Model Systems and Precision Nanomedicine.

The Probing Biosystems future science platform, led by Prof Stephen Rose, is hosted by the CSIRO Health and Biosecurity business unit and partners with Manufacturing, Data 61, AAHL, Minerals and Land & Water.

Our external partners include Anatomics, The University of Queensland, Monash University and Swinburne University of Technology.