A global pandemic therapeutics centre will be set up in Melbourne after a record donation from an international businessman and philanthropist.

Canadian and New Zealand businessman Geoffrey Cumming, who lives in Melbourne, has donated $250 million to the University of Melbourne to establish the centre.

It is the largest philanthropic donation to medical research in Australia’s history and the centre will be named in his honour.

The centre was announced on Wednesday at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Parkville.

“The Cumming Global Centre for Pandemic Therapeutics will focus on research in emerging, high potential molecular platforms and computational techniques to develop new therapeutics with unprecedented speed,” Doherty Institute director Sharon Lewin said.

“It will provide long-term support for both junior and senior researchers to tackle big and bold ideas.”

The Victorian government has already committed $75 million to the project, which is expected to create more than 200 long-term jobs.

“This is an investment in our leading medical researchers to create life-saving therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases and help us fight future pandemics,” Premier Daniel Andrews said.

The centre will rapidly develop, test, and commercialise treatments for infectious diseases, getting therapeutics to the community “within months of a pandemic outbreak”.

An effective pandemic response required both vaccines and treatments, but innovation in antipathogen therapeutics had lagged in comparison with vaccines, Professor Lewin said.

In the first 12 months of the COVID pandemic, $137 billion was publicly invested globally in vaccines, compared to $7 billion in therapeutics, she said.

The centre is expected to attract international experts to Victoria.

It aims to minimise the impact of future pandemics, and therefore “create greater societal resiliency internationally in the decades ahead”, Mr Cumming said.

“The scale and enduring nature of medical research investment by successive Victorian governments, the breadth of the talent pool in the ecosystem of the medical research precinct in Melbourne, the collegiality of all the players, together with the success of Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic were key reasons for locating the Centre in Melbourne,” he said.

The centre will initially be based in the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, before moving to the new $650 million Australian Institute for Infectious Disease, first announced in 2020.

The institute is expected to open in 2027.

-AAP