ARC Discovery Projects 2025

^{Pictured above: Professor Evdokia Dimitriadis  Photo credit Royal Women's Hospital}

Congratulations go to Prof Evdokia Dimitriadis and team for being awarded funding for an ARC Discovery Project 2025 Round 1 for their project “microRNA 124, a key modulator of uterine receptivity to establish pregnancy”.

Professor Evdokia Dimitriadis CIA leads the project which also includes investigators Doctor Wei Zhou; Associate Professor Mark Green & Doctor Olivia Nonn was awarded $756,218 over 3 years.

microRNA 124, a key modulator of uterine receptivity to establish pregnancy project summary:
In mammals, pregnancy is established when embryos adhere and implant to a “receptive” uterus. The uterine surface epithelium is normally a barrier to embryo adhesion and must remodel in a small time window within each estrous or menstrual cycle to lose its barrier function enabling embryo implantation. If the endometrium does not remodel to become receptive this leads to failure of implantation and no pregnancy is established. There is a profound lack of knowledge on how and precisely when the uterine epithelium prepares itself to accept an embryo to ensure pregnancy is established and healthy offspring. This project will define the regulatory mechanisms by which the endometrium remodels to become receptive to embryos.

The ARC received a total of 1133 applications for Discovery Projects for funding commencing in 2025 and a total of 536 projects are approved for funding commencing in 2025. The University of Melbourne had 116 Discovery Project applications submitted in this round, of which only 51 applications were approved for funding.
The objectives of the Discovery Projects scheme are to:

• support excellent pure basic, strategic basic and applied research, and research training, across all disciplines excluding clinical and other medical research, that addresses a significant problem or gap in knowledge and represents value for money;
• expand research capacity in Australia by supporting excellent researchers and teams;
• foster national and international research collaboration;
• create new knowledge with economic, commercial, environmental, social and/or cultural benefits for Australia; and
• enhance the scale and focus of research in Australian Government priority areas.

We are so proud of Prof Dimitriadis and team and look forward to the research discoveries that will come from this work.