The Commonwealth and Victorian Governments are working together to establish a new National Drug Discovery Centre aimed at turning ground-breaking scientific discoveries into new medicines faster.

Federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt and Victorian Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos today opened the new $75 million NDDC centre at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

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.

The cutting-edge robotics equipment will 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 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.

The Victorian Government’s investment helped expand the centre to provide researchers with access to additional world-class drug discovery equipment.

The first two recipients of the Federal Government subsidy will be projects to find new medicines for cancer immunotherapy and type 2 diabetes.

Professor Matthias Ernst from the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute aims to uncover how to make cancer tumours less visible to the immune system and enhance the effect of anti-tumour immune therapies.

Associate Professor Anthony Don from the Centenary Institute aims to develop new drugs that reverse systemic insulin resistance that causes type 2 diabetes, without the side effect of weight gain commonly associated with most current drugs.

Round two applications for subsidised access to the NDDC close on 23 March. There will be two funding rounds per year with increasing capacity until 2022.