The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) is the Australian Government’s dedicated capital fund for health and medical research and medical innovation. It was established on 26 August 2015 under the Medical Research Future Fund Act 2015 and is administered by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. For research offices and investigators, the MRFF is often the source of a grant that looks and feels like an NHMRC scheme — same Sapphire application platform, similar peer-review process — but sits under a different Act, a different funding mechanism, and its own governance layer. This guide covers how the MRFF is structured, what it funds, its main initiative streams, and how researchers actually access it. For the underlying definitional entry, see the dictionary term Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF); for how the MRFF fits alongside the ARC and NHMRC as one of Australia’s three national research funders, see Australian Research Funding: How the ARC, NHMRC, and MRFF Fit Together.
An endowment, not an annual appropriation
The single most important structural fact about the MRFF, and the thing most likely to trip up a grant record if it’s missed, is that it is not funded the way most Commonwealth research programs are. Most Australian Government research funding — including the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)‘s National Competitive Grants Program — is drawn from annual Budget appropriations decided by Parliament each year. The MRFF works differently: it is a capital endowment. Its principal is invested by the Future Fund Board of Guardians (the same statutory body that manages the Australian Government’s other sovereign investment funds), and it is the investment earnings on that capital — not the capital itself — that fund MRFF grants each year. The credits to the MRFF are intended to be preserved in perpetuity rather than drawn down.
The MRFF reached its original $20 billion capitalisation target in the 2020–21 financial year, several years ahead of the original schedule set out when the fund was legislated. Once a fund of that size is invested, annual earnings available for distribution run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, giving medical research a funding stream that is intended to be more stable and less exposed to single-year Budget pressures than an annually appropriated program. Because the amount available each year depends on investment performance rather than a fixed appropriation, the actual figure allocated to research varies from year to year and should always be checked against the current-year announcement rather than assumed to be static.
Each year, the Future Fund Board of Guardians determines the Maximum Annual Distribution Amount (MADA) — the ceiling on how much can be released from the MRFF for research and innovation spending that year — and reports this to the Finance Minister. The Health Minister then works within that ceiling when deciding how MRFF funding is actually allocated across grant opportunities, guided by the MRFF’s legislated Strategy and Priorities (covered below).
Who governs the MRFF
Three bodies share responsibility for the fund, and a research office administering an MRFF grant will typically deal with at least two of them over the life of an award:
- The Future Fund Board of Guardians — manages the MRFF’s invested capital and sets the Maximum Annual Distribution Amount.
- The Australian Medical Research Advisory Board (AMRAB) — an independent board established under section 32B of the MRFF Act. AMRAB is legally required to develop an Australian Medical Research and Innovation Strategy every five years (section 32D) and a set of Australian Medical Research and Innovation Priorities every two years (section 32E), each following public consultation. The Health Minister must have regard to the current Strategy and Priorities when deciding how MRFF money is allocated, which is why the priorities document is the closest thing the MRFF has to a roadmap of what it will fund next.
- The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — administers the MRFF day to day and, for most individual grant opportunities, delegates the actual running of the competition to NHMRC, to a Commonwealth Business Grants Hub, or, for a small number of Missions, to another Commonwealth agency (Cancer Australia, for example, coordinates the Australian Brain Cancer Mission).
The current cycle of priorities — the Australian Medical Research and Innovation Priorities 2024–2026 — sets out cross-cutting focus areas that grant opportunities are expected to align with, including consumer-driven research, translation and commercialisation, preventive and public health research, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing, and artificial intelligence and digital health. Because AMRAB refreshes the Priorities every two years, always check the current document on health.gov.au before assuming a previous cycle’s priorities still apply to a new grant opportunity.
What the MRFF funds
The MRFF’s remit is deliberately broader than a single-disease or single-stage research fund. Its legislated objective is to support health and medical research and medical innovation that improves health outcomes, and in practice this spans the full pipeline from discovery research through to clinical translation, implementation, and commercialisation — not just laboratory-stage or early-career work. The Department groups MRFF activity under a small number of organising themes covering patients (consumer- and patient-facing research and involvement), researchers (career-stage and capacity-building support), translation (moving research findings into clinical practice and health policy), and Missions (large, multi-year, disease- or issue-specific funding commitments). Individual grant opportunities are published under these themes and change from year to year, so the authoritative, current list is always the Department’s own MRFF initiatives page on health.gov.au rather than any static summary.
MRFF Missions: the largest, longest-running commitments
Missions are the MRFF’s flagship mechanism for sustained investment in a specific health issue: each is a named, multi-year funding commitment (typically around a decade), with its own roadmap and its own sequence of grant opportunities under it, rather than a single one-off grant round. Several Missions have been running long enough to be well-documented public commitments, including:
- Genomics Health Futures Mission — committed to invest $500.1 million in genomic medicine research over ten years from 2018–19, funding work on genomic testing, diagnosis, and personalised treatment.
- Million Minds Mental Health Research Mission — committed $125 million over ten years from 2018–19 toward research aimed at getting new mental health treatment approaches to a million Australians.
- Australian Brain Cancer Mission — a $131.2 million commitment (coordinated by Cancer Australia on the Department’s behalf) aimed at doubling brain cancer survival rates and improving quality of life over ten years.
- Dementia, Ageing and Aged Care Mission — committed $175 million from 2019–20 to 2028–29.
- Indigenous Health Research Fund — committed $160 million from 2018–19 to 2028–29 toward Indigenous-led research on health issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
This is not an exhaustive list — the MRFF has funded additional Missions covering areas such as cardiovascular health, traumatic brain injury, and rare cancers and rare diseases, and new Missions can be added as priorities evolve. Because Mission funding commitments and their remaining grant-opportunity schedules change over time, verify the current Mission list and each Mission’s remaining rounds directly against the Department’s MRFF initiatives page and grant opportunities calendar on health.gov.au before relying on a figure for a live application.
How researchers and research offices access MRFF funding
Unlike NHMRC’s Investigator and Ideas Grants, which run on a predictable annual scheme structure, MRFF funding is released as a series of individual, named grant opportunities tied to a specific initiative or Mission, each with its own opening and closing dates, eligibility rules, and guidelines. In practice, accessing MRFF funding follows a consistent pattern regardless of which initiative or Mission a particular opportunity sits under:
- Find the opportunity. Every MRFF grant opportunity is listed on GrantConnect, the Australian Government’s whole-of-government grants publishing system, and cross-referenced on the Department’s own MRFF grant opportunities calendar on health.gov.au. Most opportunities are also mirrored on NHMRC’s own funding pages, since NHMRC runs the majority of MRFF competitions on the Department’s behalf.
- Check eligibility carefully. MRFF eligibility rules are set per grant opportunity and are not identical to NHMRC’s own scheme eligibility — eligible organisation types, administering-institution requirements, and (for some opportunities) consumer co-leadership requirements can differ from a standard NHMRC Investigator or Ideas Grant. NHMRC publishes a dedicated MRFF eligible organisations reference precisely because this trips people up.
- Apply through Sapphire. For the large majority of MRFF opportunities that NHMRC administers, the application itself is lodged through NHMRC’s Sapphire grants management system — the same platform used for NHMRC’s own Investigator and Ideas Grants. Applicants are generally advised to start their Sapphire application as soon as a scheme opens, since an Eligibility and Compliance Check is typically required before the application can be formally submitted, and preferred check slots fill up.
- Meet compliance obligations tied to the grant, not just the scheme. Because an MRFF award is legislatively a Commonwealth grant agreement rather than an NHMRC-Act instrument, its specific terms (reporting cadence, IP and commercialisation clauses for translation-stage awards, acknowledgement requirements) are set out in the individual grant agreement. MRFF grant agreements generally still require compliance with NHMRC’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research for any project involving human research, even though the fund itself sits outside the NHMRC Act.
- Route questions through the research office first. Because MRFF opportunities can be administered by NHMRC, by a Commonwealth Business Grants Hub, or, for some Missions, by another agency entirely, the correct contact point for a query varies by opportunity. A university or institute’s own research administration office is generally the right first stop for confirming which body is running a specific MRFF competition and what its current guidelines require.
MRFF vs. NHMRC: why the distinction matters on a grant record
It is easy, and common, to record an MRFF-funded award internally as though it were simply another NHMRC grant, because the day-to-day experience — Sapphire application, NHMRC-style peer review, National Statement compliance — often looks identical. The distinction matters administratively even so: an MRFF award sits under the Medical Research Future Fund Act 2015 and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s own grant agreement terms, not under the National Health and Medical Research Council Act 1992. For a research office, that affects which funder should be recorded against the award for reporting purposes, which body’s grant agreement template and acknowledgement wording applies, and, occasionally, which compliance requirements (for example, translation- or commercialisation-related conditions on some MRFF Missions) apply on top of the standard human-research ethics requirements shared with NHMRC. See the MRFF dictionary entry for the full governance breakdown, and Australian Research Funding: How the ARC, NHMRC, and MRFF Fit Together for how the MRFF sits alongside the Australian Research Council (ARC) and NHMRC as one of Australia’s three national funders.
Frequently asked questions
Is the MRFF part of NHMRC?
No. The MRFF is a separately legislated fund created under the Medical Research Future Fund Act 2015 and administered by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. NHMRC frequently runs individual MRFF grant opportunities on the Department’s behalf, using NHMRC’s own Sapphire platform, but the fund itself is not an NHMRC program.
How much does the MRFF distribute each year?
The amount varies year to year, because distributions come from investment earnings on the fund’s capital rather than a fixed Budget appropriation. The Future Fund Board of Guardians sets a Maximum Annual Distribution Amount each year based on fund performance; the fund’s capital reached its original $20 billion target in 2020–21, after which annual earnings available for research have generally run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Always check the current year’s announced distribution rather than relying on a prior year’s figure.
What is an MRFF Mission?
A Mission is a large, multi-year (typically roughly decade-long) MRFF funding commitment focused on a specific health issue — for example genomics, mental health, brain cancer, dementia, or Indigenous health — delivered through a sequence of grant opportunities under that Mission rather than a single grant round.
Where do I find current MRFF grant opportunities?
Current and forthcoming MRFF grant opportunities are published on GrantConnect and on the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s MRFF grant opportunities calendar, with most opportunities administered by NHMRC also listed on NHMRC’s own funding pages.
Do MRFF grants use the same application system as NHMRC grants?
For the majority of MRFF opportunities, which NHMRC administers on the Department’s behalf, yes — applications are lodged through NHMRC’s Sapphire grants management system, the same system used for NHMRC’s own Investigator and Ideas Grants.
