Monash University has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), formally establishing collaboration in pharmaceutical regulatory science and therapeutics development.
The agreement brings Monash into the TGA’s Academic Outreach Programme which fosters collaboration across research, knowledge exchange and education to support the delivery of safe, effective and high-quality medicines in Australia and globally.
Through the Academic Outreach Programme, the partnership will explore possible educational engagement opportunities at Monash, including curriculum enrichment and collaborative teaching activities that connect students with regulatory science and public health practice.
Monash University will continue to collaborate with the TGA’s Indo-Pacific Regulatory Strengthening Programme (RSP) through the Monash Quality of Medicines Initiative(QoMI), due to the shared objectives of improving regulatory capacity and addressing the prevalence of substandard medicines in the region.
The first research activity will see the Monash QoMI working with the TGA’s RSP to evaluate existing methods – and identify new approaches – for detecting toxic contaminants in oral liquid medicines such as cough and cold syrups.
The collaborative research will focus on assessing and optimising analytical methods for detecting contaminants in low-resource settings with limited laboratory infrastructure. In parallel, a Monash QoMI PhD project will explore the development of a new, low-cost and rapid screening test to identify contamination in pharmaceutical products.
