MedChem Australia, a first-of-its-kind national initiative connecting three of the nation’s top medicinal chemistry groups from Monash University, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute) and the University of Sydney, will accelerate promising early-stage drug discovery projects towards clinical trials and, ultimately, create new medicines for a broad range of diseases.

The initiative was established with $9.75 million in funding from the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund, along with more than $5 million from Therapeutic Innovation Australia and the three partners, bringing the project's total seed funding to around $15 million over five years.

MedChem Australia will plug a critical gap in Australia's drug discovery pipeline by ensuring promising projects addressing unmet medical needs are supported with additional resources and expertise to aid progression and enhance value.  MedChem Australia will comprise similar scale nodes of activity at MIPS, WEHI and the University of Sydney. Each will maintain state-of-the-art facilities for drug design and synthesis and MedChem Australia will fund skilled medicinal chemists and project consumables for teams to progress projects that are selected on a competitive basis.

MedChem Australia is making its first call for project applications in early December. Globally, Australia has an enviable reputation in biomedical research, but a poor record in translating these discoveries into new homegrown medicines for patients who need them.