Monash experts join $18.8M national effort to breach the blood-brain barrier in brain cancer fight

Professor Joseph Nicolazzo, the Director of the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

3 September 2026

Researchers from Monash University are joining an $18.8 million national project to develop a new generation of drugs capable of breaching the blood-brain barrier to treat deadly brain cancers.

Funded by the Medical Research Future Fund’s (MRFF) Frontier Health and Medical Research initiative, the collaboration will create an accelerated pathway to clinical trials for high-grade gliomas, including adult glioblastoma and paediatric diffuse midline glioma.

The program is a collaborative effort between WEHI, the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), The Brain Cancer Centre, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the University of Queensland and the University of Technology Sydney.

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