£230m for research technologies

A partnership led by the Medical Research Council (MRC) is set to receive an investment of over £230 million for a range of technologies aimed at identifying the causes of diseases such as cancer and dementia, and dramatically speeding up diagnosis and treatment.

According to an MRC statement, the technologies will be used to discover exactly how the differences in cellular and molecular make-up of people affect how they respond to diseases and to treatment.

“The funding will go to 23 truly innovative projects from across the UK

Chancellor George Osborne

The Clinical Research Infrastructure Initiative partnership will bring together funding from UK government, devolved administrations, Arthritis Research UK, British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK, to advance clinical research in 23 key projects at centres across the country, including research teams at 15 universities, the MRC statement read.

For example, a research group from the University of Leeds and the University of York will receive £7.6 million to develop a new imaging method (SABRE) that has the potential to increase the signal in an MRI image by up to 100,000 times.

Using SABRE, researchers claim it will be possible to label both drugs and substances that occur naturally in the body, making the method widely applicable and possible to use alongside any hospital MRI scanner.

The government, which invested £150 million alone, has said it wants to protect UK science spending, and today’s announcement clarifies that position, Osborne said.

“The funding will go to 23 truly innovative projects from across the UK today that represent the best of British ingenuity and scientific exploration,” Osborne said.

“The government, charities, universities and industry will be working together to advance our knowledge in combatting the biggest medical challenges of our time,” he said.

For more information about the various funding project, please see here.