Funding to promote development and implementation of innovative clinical trials

The 2024 Clinical Trial Enabling Infrastructure grant opportunity is part of the Medical Research Future Fund’s National Critical Research Infrastructure Initiative (NCRI).

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: address an area of unmet medical need by promoting the development and implementation of adaptive platform trials. Funding under Stream 1 is available as follows:
  • 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): establish a new clinical trial practice network or extend an existing clinical trial practice network to consolidate and strengthen sector capability in clinical trials and collaboration, with the aim of embedding evidence-based care in the health system and improving health outcomes, in an area of unmet medical need (up to $7,000,000).

For this grant opportunity, an application may be submitted to one of the above three streams. Applicants must specify the stream they are applying in their application (and topic for Stream 1 applicants).

An organisation may submit more than one application to a single stream, but there are restrictions on the number of applications an individual (Chief Investigator) may submit to a single stream.

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

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.