Funding to promote development and implementation of innovative clinical trials

This program provides funding to promote development and implementation of 'adaptive platform' and 'registry based' clinical trial methodologies, that will be used to conduct world-class health and medical research in areas of unmet medical need.

The 2023 Innovative Trials grant opportunity is part of the Medical Research Future Fund’s National Critical Research Infrastructure Initiative. NCRI provides funding through multiple streams to establish and extend infrastructure (facilities, equipment, systems and services) of critical importance that will be used to conduct world-class health and medical research.

Within the NCRI innovation enablers stream, this grant opportunity focuses on promoting development and implementation of ‘adaptive platform’ and ‘registry based’ clinical trials which are thought to offer more efficient evaluation of potential medical therapies over conventional trial designs.

This grant opportunity will provide grants of financial assistance across three streams, to support Australian medical research and medical innovation projects that:

• Stream 1 (Incubator and Targeted Call for Research): address an area of unmet medical need by promoting the development and implementation of adaptive platform trials. Research proposals in this stream must focus on one of the following Topics:
  • Topic A (Incubator): conducting inception projects that build evidence and capability to demonstrate the feasibility of establishing a national adaptive platform trial that would allow for rapid assessment of pharmacological and/or non-pharmacological interventions in an area of unmet need (up to $300,000)
  • Topic B (Targeted Call for Research): establishing a new national adaptive platform trial that addresses an area of unmet need, including set up of central infrastructure and conduct of initial launch domains (up to $5,000,000)
  • Topic C (Targeted Call for Research): expanding an existing adaptive platform trial by adding new domains that address an area of unmet need (up to $3,000,000).
• Stream 2 (Targeted Call for Research): conduct a registry-based randomised controlled trial in an area of unmet medical need by embedding a registry-based randomised controlled trial into a pre-existing clinical registry (up to $1,500,000)
• Stream 3 (Targeted Call for Research): generate evidence of the efficiency and cost effectiveness of innovative trial designs over conventional trial designs for:
  • Topic A (Targeted Call for Research): adaptive platform trials (up to $1,000,000)
  • Topic B (Targeted Call for Research): registry-based randomised controlled trials (up to $1,000,000).

To be considered for funding under this opportunity, 20% or more of all Chief Investigators must be early to mid-career researchers.

An application may be submitted to one of the above three streams only. Applicants can apply for more than one stream with different applications.

Reporting templates are available from the MRFF grants management webpage. The page also provides other resources for MRFF grant administration, including current policies and relevant forms and templates.