Crucial early stage drug research to fight illnesses such as cancer, infection and autoimmune diseases have been given a boost on Tuesday, with Australia's new biotechnology accelerator announcing its first tranche of investment projects.

Backed by the state government of Victoria, BioCurate is a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Monash University which aims to help drug development trials get past the difficult early stages that researchers refer to as the "valley of death."

During this time many drug research projects suffer from a lack of interest by investors due to the high failure rate of taking prospective drugs from theory to commercial viability.

Dr. Glen Carter, antimicrobial resistance researcher at the University of Melbourne, will receive funding for his team's work in developing antibiotics for resistant bacteria such as hospital superbugs, which are becoming increasingly difficult to treat using current therapies.

"It's really important, antibiotic resistance is on the rise and there's a really urgent need for new therapeutics," Carter told Xinhua.

"It's mainly an academic thing at the moment, a lot of big pharma have dropped out of the antibiotic discovery sector, so for academic groups such as ours to develop these novel drugs and progress them to where they can be used to treat people, we need backing from people like BioCurate."

BioCurate Chief executive Dr. Glenn Begley explained that there are five basic criterias they look for when selecting projects to fund.

"First there has to be clear unmet need, there has to be novel science, there has to be clinical and regulatory development path and the potential for intellectual property creation," he said.

"Finally, it has to involve investigators that are generally interested in impact from their research."

Begley said all six of the newly funded projects addressed an unmet need and the possibility for clinical and regulatory applications, as well as covering a broad range of notoriously difficult illnesses to treat.

"What we're seeing is the full spectrum of research that Melbourne is known for, so we're seeing opportunities that range from infectious disease through autoimmune disease, oncology, alzheimer's, we're seeing the whole spectrum of diseases," Begley said.

Working with collaborators at Monash University to develop a new class of drug primarily to treat malaria, another recipient of investment Dr. Sheena McGowan believes her team's work could also have applications in the treatment of infectious diseases and even cancer.

"It's the stage of the project at the moment that is difficult to fund," McGowan said.

"The honest truth is unfortunately most of these research projects do not end up in new drugs - that's the reality."

"But for everything that fails there's something new that's learnt and hopefully the next time it comes through it's successful."

What helps to set BioCurate's method apart is that the projects will have to pass various stages of testing to continue to receive funding, with each increment typically in the order of 150,000 to 200,000 U.S. dollars.