Koalas are truly iconic for all of us, and sadly their numbers are decreasing. There's actually fewer koalas today than there were yesterday. Perhaps 50% of many populations of wild koalas are threatened by AL disease, so it's really contributing to their decline. Queensland and New South Wales where most of our koalas are, they're endangered in both of these states, and it's a pretty insidious disease.

It causes eye infections, causing blindness, it causes infertility and a painful situation of both urination and infertility and female koalas in particular, while there are antibiotics, this doesn't really work for koalas because the antibiotics also kill their gut bacteria and they need those to digest nucleus sleeves.

So a vaccine has been an obvious solution. This is the actual vaccine here, and it might look pretty simple, but it's not. 

It's quite a complicated vaccine. It's got six different components into it. Three of them are the proteins of chlamydia. So we've actually designed them so they'll cover the different strains of chlamydia circulating in different parts of the country.

And there are three different parts to the adjuvant. We're quite pleased about the adjuvant because it's designed to be a single shot adjuvant. A lot of vaccines require boosters, but we've purposely developed a vaccine that requires a single shot for a wild animal like koalas. 

That's what you really need, and we are very pleased to have received that approval that the first ever koala chlamydia vaccine has been approved, ready for use and distribution.

There's no doubt as good as the team is, it's because we're a part of the University of the Sunshine Coast, which has a strong focus on applied applications like this, and there's no doubt that we have an opportunity to do really good work in this respect and lead Australia and the world in many respects.

We are very focused on ecology and sustainability. So this project, is a prime example of how we are putting theory into practice and really making a difference where it matters. 

We also do field work in in wild populations. So we need field vets that do all this work. That's pretty important. As good as our work is, and as good as our experience has led to this vaccine, it's the next generation that needs to be part of saving the koala. 

We can do our bit, and I've got a 12-year-old granddaughter who loves Koala projects and clearly her interest and all the others at that age and younger that are going to be able to save the next generation of koalas. 

I think overall this has been a major achievement and for me, I've been pretty determined along with a group of people. I guess after more than 15 years of work and a lot of people contributed to this, we've reached this pretty key point.