Medical research innovation receives £23.2m boost

£23.3m is being given to UK universities by the Medical Research Council (MRC) as part of a drive to fund innovative medical research and progress ideas from universities into industry and out to patients

The announcement was made by Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson as he visited the University of Birmingham’s medical school and the Institute of Biomedical Research laboratories.

The awards are part of three different funding initiatives, set up by the MRC; The Discovery awards mechanism, Confidence in Concept and Proximity to Discovery.

The Discovery awards mechanism is a funding initiative which will accelerate ‘blue skies’ medical research by providing support much faster than usual funding routes, will focus on building capacity and capability in areas of high national priority and will award £8.4m across 12 institutions, according to the MRC. 

Another £11.6m of funding was announced for the Confidence in Concept (CiC) awards in 21 universities. 

The CiC awards provide flexible funding to universities to accelerate the transition from discovery science to viability testing and take promising basic research to the industry-academia interaction stage for the development of therapies, diagnostics and medical devices, according to MRC.

In three years since its launch, researchers whose preliminary work has been supported by the CiC scheme awards have secured £110m of further support from charity, public sector and industry funders.  The data generated has helped support the creation of 16 new spin-out companies and led to the award of at least 27 patents.

The Proximity to Discovery scheme helps universities to build partnerships with industry by developing new collaborations and ways of exchanging knowledge and skills and will award £3.3m investment in 17 universities, according to MRC.

John Savill, chief executive of the MRC, said “The MRC funding awards help to identify and encourage exciting science and bring different cultures together to form strong collaborations. 

“Confidence in Concept and the Discovery awards allow research institutions to rapidly test out exciting new ideas in translational and basic research. 

“Experts at the institutions themselves decide which research projects to pursue, which creates the agility to support truly cutting-edge ideas and help them to attract further funding.  Proximity to Discovery is a smaller-scale scheme that helps academics form important connections with industry, enabling them to exchange skills and develop productive partnerships.”

Universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, said: “Our global scientific impact far exceeds our size as a nation and our world class researchers like those at Birmingham University help drive the engines of innovation keeping the UK at the forefront of new discovery.

“That is why we are protecting the science budget in real terms throughout this Parliament. This £23m fund provides invaluable support to help develop new ideas into the drugs and methods that will help save and improve lives.”