A new national drug discovery centre set to fast-track the development of new medicines has been officially opened in Melbourne.
Federal Minister for Health, Greg Hunt and Victorian
Opened by the Minister for Health, Jenny Mikakos and her Federal counterpart Greg Hunt, the new $75 million National Drug Discovery Centre (NDDC) is to be housed at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.
Ms Mikakos said the first two recipients to be supported by the Centre would be projects to find new medicines for cancer immunotherapy and type two diabetes.
She said there would be two funding rounds per year with the next round of applications for subsidised access to the NDDC closing on 23 March.
Mr Hunt said the Centre would use cutting-edge robotics equipment to enable researchers to screen hundreds of thousands of chemicals and rapidly identify which ones can alter processes in the body implicated by a disease or condition.
“The state-of-the-art centre was built with $25 million from the Federal Government, $18 million from the Victorian Government and $32 million from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute,” Mr Hunt said.
“The Federal Government will subsidise 90 per cent of the screening cost through the Medical Research Future Fund, reducing the cost from more than $300,000 to around $30,000 to $45,000.”
Mr Hunt said the Victorian Government’s investment helped expand the centre to provide researchers with access to additional world-class drug discovery equipment.
