Peter Timms' ambitious plan to vaccinate koalas against chlamydia before it's too late

After all, it's not like COVID; you can't just build vaccination centres and send out an invitation for them to drop in.

This is the tricky problem faced by Sunshine Coast University scientist Peter Timms, who is fighting to save our iconic tree-hugging marsupial from extinction.

But he has a plan.

The Professor of Microbiology and world-leading expert in chlamydia has spent 30 years studying the infection. He's spent the past decade developing a successful vaccine for koalas against the sexually transmitted disease, which causes eye infections, blindness, kidney infections, infertility and death.

Professor Timms was recently made a Queensland Great for his landmark scientific contributions to wildlife protection.

Now, under his direction, a series of vaccine trials are being held at wildlife hospitals across Australia.

"We've done enough research to know that the vaccine against chlamydia in koalas can work. Now we're focused on taking that vaccine from research to the real world and making a vaccine that can be approved and distributed. A little bottle that veterinarians can use." he said.

"It's a bit different from human vaccines. In human vaccines there's money to be made whereas with a koala vaccine we're going to have to fund it differently. It's going to have to be through government contributions and philanthropists."

Professor Timms said the vaccine could be used on three groups of animals - healthy animals with no chlamydia, animals which have the infection but no disease yet, and those with the infection who are showing midrange signs of disease - a small trial showed improvements in animals who were showing eye disease as a result of the infection.

Getting the vaccine into the animals was a challenge, he said. The first stage was to use wildlife hospitals which had sick and injured koalas brought to them. The next logical group, he said, was those populations which had to be captured and relocated to make way for human population expansion such as tram lines and shopping centres.

"We're making life more stressful for koalas. We're taking their trees away and there's thousands and thousands of koalas affected by that activity every year."

"They all used to be connected in big groups but now they're all separated, because we keep building roads and housing estates and we divide them into smaller and smaller groups. So where they used to be 100 koalas in a group it becomes 50 and then 20 and then they disappear altogether.

"I'm not so worried about vaccinating the last koala in the last tree. I'm worried about the first koala in the first tree," he said.

Professor Timms explained to The Senior why it was difficult to use antibiotics to treat the chlamydia in koalas.

"Koalas eat a very strange diet. Eucalyptus leaves are full of toxins and nasty tannins so the koalas have all these extra enzymes which are designed to break-down all the toxins and tannins, but this means the koala's system is designed to degrade any evil chemical it sees and it sees an antibiotic as a toxin and breaks it down.

In humans, an antibiotic might be taken as a single tablet or a course for a week. But to have the same effect in koalas, the animals would have to be given antibiotics for 45 days.

"When koalas get antibiotics, sure it kills the chlamydia, but it also destroys the gut bacteria, which is its life and death. If you kill the gut bacteria, the koala can't digest the eucalyptus leaves."

Professor Timms said he was pleased and humbled to be named a Queensland Great.

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He does not believe Australian know how critical the situation is. "I think Australians may be a bit apathetic," he said.

"I think the Americans and the Europeans probably know more about the risk to our koalas than we do. I think we take them for granted."

As well as chlamydia, the poor koala is also facing a second dangerous infection - the koala retrovirus which would appear to make the chlamydia worse and which has been linked to cancers such as lymphoma.

Professor Timms has also studied chlamydia in sheep, cattle and birds as well as in humans.

The other Queenslanders named in the 2022 awards were: Queensland Elder Uncle Albert Holt, cricketer and youth and multicultural advocate Usman Khawaja, burns treatment pioneer Emeritus Professor Dr Stuart Pegg, trailblazing engineer Else Shepherd, First Nations health and human rights advocate Professor Gracelyn Smallwood, Queensland artist, the late Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori and Natural and cultural history institution Queensland Museum Network.

Presenting the awards, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk paid tribute to their achievements, advocacy, creativity, and community spirit.

"I'm proud to acknowledge the inspiring lives of these great Queenslanders," she said.

"They have improved indigenous education and justice, used sporting prominence to assist young migrants, pioneered burns management, and had extraordinarily productive technical careers.

"They've advocated for better health for our First Nations Queenslanders, made landmark scientific contributions to wildlife protection, impressed the world with local indigenous art and curated our state's scientific and cultural history.

"Their contributions to health and research, science and technologies, the arts and education have provided pathways for disadvantaged communities, and pioneered life-changing developments."