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A whistleblowing vaccine expert says researchers claiming to have found a jab for koalas with deadly chlamydia made a dumbfounding mistake that completely undermines their findings.
A vaccine produced by University of Sunshine Coast microbiologist Professor Peter Timms was called historic last year by federal environment minister Murray Watt, and widely celebrated as a cure to one of the endangered species’ biggest threats.
But the claims have long felt wrong to University of Queensland molecular virologist Professor Keith Chappell, who played key role in establishing the Molecular Clamp vaccine technology to fight COVID-19.
“I saw Professor Timms speak in 2023 and that sort of triggered some alarms for me from that very first time present because the claims he was making were not validated by the data,” Chappell said.
Chappell, who’s fears were first published by The Australian on Saturday, said Timms initially refused to share the data with him.
When he got his hands on it, Chappell said he could barely believe what he was looking at.
“It seems really silly to say out loud, but they’re vaccinating koalas at the age of 10 or 11 and saying that the vaccine is responsible for allowing them to get to that age rather than just the vaccine protecting them from that point forward,” he said.
“I had to look at the data multiple times and show it to multiple people just to convince myself that it was that simple, and that crazy, of a mistake that they made.”
The University of the Sunshine Coast had received $749,000 from the federal government for the research, on top of a $100,000 from the Queensland government.
A USC spokesperson said they stood by Timms work.
“This work, undertaken over more than a decade, reflects deep expertise, robust governance and a clear commitment to evidence‑based research. Professor Timms is widely recognised nationally and internationally as a leading authority on chlamydial disease,” they said.
The spokesperson also refuted reporting in The Australian that the vaccine’s production had been paused by the manufacturer.
“The vaccine roll-out has not been suspended, however it is not currently being used as our manufacturing partner is in the process of producing a high-quality APVMA [Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority] approved standard batch of the vaccine,” they said, adding the vaccine would then be tested on healthy koalas if it passed the tests.
“We know chlamydia impacts the fertility of wild koala populations and is a threat to their survival, that’s why the Albanese government is supporting this project,” Watt said when the vaccine was registered with the APVMA last year.
“We knew a single-dose vaccine – with no need for a booster – was the answer to reducing the rapid, devastating spread of this disease, which accounts for as much as half of koala deaths across wild populations in Australia,” Timms said.
But following his investigation, Chappell said the chances this vaccine – marketed as Klavax by Sydney manufacturer Treidlia Biovet – will prove to work are depressingly low.
“We don’t know if it works or not, and that means more research needs to be done, and it needs to be done correctly,” he said.
“They have published a peer-reviewed placebo controlled trial .. [in that] particular trial it showed no effect. So it doesn’t really look very good for this vaccine, it doesn’t look very promising at all.”
In a statement published on Friday, a university spokesperson said Timms’ study, published in the journal NPJ Vaccines, was peer-reviewed, but admitted “minor errors” had been found.
After removing the data points, the spokesperson said the study still showed “a significant difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated koalas in reducing the development of disease”.
“While it still shows a trend that indicates the vaccine protects from death, this is no longer statistically significant due to the reduced sample size,” they said.
Chappell said millions has been spent on trying to end chlamydia to no avail, and the survival of koalas in the wild was a multifaceted.
“What I think we need to do is protect our natural habitat. It’s a complex issue, there’s drought, there’s bushfires, there’s habitat degradation – we really need to address the underlying conditions affecting the environment and give koalas the best chance of survival,” he said.
Timms has been contacted for comment.
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