About the Drug Discovery Centre for Childhood Cancer

The ACRF Drug Discovery Centre for Childhood Cancer is a unique facility dedicated to the development of new anti-cancer therapeutics. Housed within the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at UNSW, and managed by Dr Greg Arndt, the Drug Discovery Centre will focus on identifying new compounds for the treatment of cancer, especially childhood cancer.

Using advanced technology including robotics, a “library” storing 160,000 chemical compounds and a special technique called “high throughput small molecule screening”, the Drug Discovery Centre opens up a new world of possibilities to cancer research scientists looking to develop new anti-cancer drugs.

The Drug Discovery Centre came about as a result of a $3.1 million grant awarded to Children’s Cancer Institute Australia by the Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) for the purpose of purchasing the necessary equipment for the Centre. The funds were used to secure the integrated robotics, chemical compound library and additional capital items related to target identification and validation and cell biology.

It is anticipated that the Drug Discovery Centre will be used to discover “hit” chemical compounds for different cancers, provide academic researchers with an array of high throughput technologies and resources for drug discovery, and educate researchers in the use of these resources.