SYDNEY, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Australia opened a new national drug development center on Thursday to help fast-track medicines for major diseases, with treatment for cancer and type 2 diabetes given first attention, according to health authorities.

The National Drug Discovery Centre, touted as the first of its kind, is "aimed at turning ground-breaking scientific discoveries into new medicines faster" by tapping "cutting-edge robotics equipment" that enables researchers to screen "hundreds of thousands of chemicals and rapidly identify which ones can alter processes in the body implicated by a disease or condition", according to a statement from the health minister's office.

The center, costing more than 48 million U.S. dollars and located at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Victoria state capital Melbourne, will provide researchers with access to world-class drug discovery equipment, with initial projects involving new medicines for cancer immunotherapy and type 2 diabetes.

The work involves the development of new drugs that "reverse systemic insulin resistance that causes type 2 diabetes, without the side effect of additional weight gain associated with most existing drugs," according to the research institute.

Subsidies will also be given to help identify new immunotherapy cancer treatments, uncovering ways of making cancer tumors less visible to the immune system and enhancing the effect of anti-tumor immune therapies. The findings could lead to new anti-cancer drugs that could treat breast, bowel, pancreatic and other solid tumors, it said.

"This center will allow medical researchers to fast-track the development of new drugs to treat common and rare diseases ... Our governments have worked together to establish this center which is the first of its kind in Australia," said Australia's Federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt.

(Photo: VCG)