Australian Universities Advance AI and Quantum Drug Discovery Platforms
University of Melbourne receives $2.1 million for quantum-enabled brain-on-chip platform for neurological diseases, while Evogene partners with Queensland University of Technology on AI-driven cancer therapeutics targeting chemotherapy resistance.
A University of Melbourne industry collaboration has been awarded $2.1 million by the Australian Government to build a quantum-enabled platform to support faster discovery and development of therapies for neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's. The University has formed a consortium with technology companies Chromos Labs, Tessara Therapeutics, Quantum Brilliance and Axol Biosciences to develop a quantum-enabled platform that measures real-time electrical activity from 3D human neural micro-tissues, known as brain-on-chip technology.
The quantum-enabled platform for neurological drug development is one of eight quantum technology projects awarded a total of $12.7 million from Stage Two of the Critical Technologies Challenge Program (CTCP) to develop a working prototype of their platform. The system provides a pathway towards a fast, scalable tool for measuring real-time brain activity in synthetic tissue cultures that replicate human brain tissue.
If successful, this brain-on-chip technology could help evaluate the effectiveness of treatments for neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, epilepsy and anxiety, in the laboratory before moving into expensive and complex human trials. The consortium brings together technology developers with end users to evaluate this novel quantum biotechnology platform.
Neurological drug development remains one of the highest-risk areas in biopharma, in part because many preclinical models do not reliably predict human outcomes. By using brain-on-chip technology, the consortium aims to help researchers assess treatment responses faster and speed up the development pipeline for new therapies.
In a separate development, Evogene has partnered with Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia to progress the development of AI-driven small molecule cancer therapeutics. The partnership will combine Evogene's computational chemistry capabilities with expertise focusing on therapy-resistant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and other cancers.
The collaboration is driven by breakthrough findings uncovering a novel druggable cellular detoxification pathway driving Cisplatin resistance in NSCLC. The teams intend to design new small-molecule inhibitors to block this pathway and restore sensitivity to treatment in resistant cancers.
Despite significant advancements in cancer treatment, resistance to standard-of-care chemotherapies and targeted therapies remain a major hurdle in treating patients with aggressive cancers, such as NSCLC. The effectiveness of cornerstone therapies such as Cisplatin is limited by high intrinsic resistance, seen in 60-70% of treated patients, while 30-40% of patients receiving targeted therapies also fail to respond upfront. In immunotherapy, whether as monotherapy or combined with chemotherapy, similar rates of both intrinsic and acquired resistance are observed.
The collaboration will focus on pinpointing critical mechanisms within Cisplatin-induced detoxification processes that can be therapeutically disrupted. Evogene's ChemPass AI platform will generate high-quality chemical leads, prioritizing molecules with strong inhibitory potential and favorable drug-like properties. Iterative refinement of compound designs will be achieved by integrating biological insights into the ChemPass AI generative model for multi-parameter optimization of drug candidates.