The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and the Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF) are still new kids on the block in driving Australian health and medical research. But their impact is increasingly felt across both public research and business.
Recent announcements (May to August) include:
Set up as an endowment fund, its capital will be continuously invested, and earnings then distributed as grants to the health and medical research community.
The Government will gradually increase the capital base of the fund, which currently is at $9.5 billion (July 2018), to reach $20 billion by 2021.
Over the five year period the Government is building up the fund, it will distribute a total of $1.4 billion to support medical research, with the amounts increasing year by year. From 2021 onwards annual investments will then be close to $1 billion.
This will then more than double the funding provided by the NHMRC (currently around $900 million).
Key principles guiding the fund's investments are to encourage collaborative research, and to look out for translation and scalability features in proposals that address specific health issues where there is both a burden and unmet research need.
To this end, it has four broader research streams (Patients; Researchers; Missions; and Translation) that include a broad range of initiatives and programs. They provide a number of smaller and targeted measures such as a $5 million initiative to support new clinical trials for adolescents and young adults with cancer, and a $32 million investment targeting exchange between industry and academia.
In May, the Government announced the Genomics Health Futures Mission expert advisory committee, which will be led by Professor Ian Frazer.
The 13 member steering committee will develop an operational plan for the Genomics Health Futures Mission.
The first project of the genomics mission will be the $20 million Mackenzie's Mission for a pre-conception trial for rare and debilitating birth disorders including Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Fragile X and Cystic Fibrosis.
But there are also major initiatives, for example the $240 million over 5 years Frontier Health and Medical Research program, which will provide support for researchers and collaborators who have ‘out of the box’ ideas and discoveries.
Another major focus area is also clinical trials. In its 2018-19 budget the Government announced to extent the MRFF Rare Cancers, Rare Diseases and Unmet Need Clinical Trials program to $206 million over five years (a recently announced $33 million funding round closed 16 August), and to invest another $42 million over five years in international clinical trial collaborations.
The MRFF will also fund large-scale research missions including the $500 million over 10 years Australian Genomics Health Futures Mission announced in the May 2018 budget.
The impact this investment will have on Australia's medical research capacity is likely to be considerable, also as it's measures are more flexible and targeted on certain priority issues than the funding the NHMRC is providing.
In addition to the NHMRC and the MRFF, the Government has created the $500 million BTF as a third major investment vehicle driving health and medical reasearch in Australia, with its focus set on commercial developments.
It was established in 2015 under the National Innovation and Science Agenda with $250 million of Commonwealth capital and $251.25 million private sector capital, and operates as an equity co-investment venture capital program administered by three private fund managers: Brandon Capital Partners, OneVentures Management, and BioScience Managers.
Since 2017, the BTF has offered a total of $69 million to 11 companies, with the investment of $22 million to Certa Therapeutics the largest to date, followed by $10 million to ProTA Therapeutics, which is developing new treatments of food allergies in children and adults.