MRC: Experimental medicine funding call

12/11/2020

17/12/2020

The Medical Research Council invites outline proposals for its experimental medicine funding call. This supports research addressing gaps in the understanding of the causes, progression and treatment of human disease through experimental intervention, or challenge, in humans. The aim is to produce new mechanistic insights, identifying opportunities to modify disease pathways and enabling novel therapeutic or diagnostic approaches for future development. All disease areas and interventions are welcomed by the panel. The application must involve an experimental intervention or challenge in humans, perturbing the system to explore disease mechanism. The challenge may be pharmacological, immunological, physiological, psychological or infectious. There is no limit to the amount of funding for or the length of your project. Grants are generally funded at 80 per cent of the full economic costs, and the host organisation must agree to find the balance.

The following types of proposals are eligible for support: •use of novel readouts or technologies especially related to early evaluation of clinical efficacy; •use of drugs, other interventions or measures with established safety profiles in new settings or conditions, such as repurposing drugs as tool compounds to probe disease mechanism; •deep characterisation and phenotyping of subjects using samples from clinical studies may be included where there is a clear link to a current treatment strategy but should not be the sole focus of the proposal.

The PI must be based at a UK HEI, independent research organisation, government-funded organisation, university unit, MRC unit or institute, or the Frances Crick institute. Researchers from overseas research organisations may apply as a co-investigator if they provide expertise not available in the UK.