News

MCM program: Building momentum

The national significance of DMTC’s Medical Countermeasures (MCM) Program, bringing industry and research partners together to work on national health security challenges, has been highlighted in the latest in the series of Defence Science & Technology Outlook publications.

Program Leader Dr Felicia Pradera outlined the role of the DMTC program as an important step in reducing Australia’s historic reliance on imported products. This is significant in the face of two scenarios – one, a global event which may result in closed international borders or two, a specific threat in our region for which there may not be an available international solution.

The DMTC program aims to tackle this persistent shortage of expertise by injecting funding and strategic guidance into what is currently a fragile but important industrial eco-system. It aims to capitalise on, and extend Australia’s global reputation for world-class medical and scientific regulatory standards.

Dr Pradera highlighted DMTC’s research strengths and the criticality of its ISO:9001 accreditation which is vital for international credibility in Medical R&D. DMTC’s program attracted an initial investment of $5 million from CSIRO and a further $5 million from DST under the NGTF. Industrial and research partners have also co-invested in the program. For the MCM community, successful R&D projects will start to close the gaps identified in audits of Australia’s MCM capability conducted in 2012 and again in 2017. Dr Pradera was a co-author of both of the audits and now leads the DMTC work to reduce the gaps and improve national MCM capability.

To read the full article a link to the online viewer portal for the Outlook publication is here.