MRC Experimental Medicine to Define New Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration

Funding for MRC-eligible researchers to investigate the causes, progression and treatment of neurodegenerative conditions that give rise to dementia.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is providing funding to investigate the causes, progression and treatment of neurodegenerative conditions that give rise to dementia. Supported projects must include an experimental intervention or challenge in humans and focus on a mechanistic hypothesis.

Funding will support experimental medicine projects that are conducted in living humans in partnership with at least one industry partner. Projects should be ambitious and challenge-led and based around a clearly articulated gap in understanding of neurodegenerative disease mechanisms. Although not primarily aimed at discovering new treatments, the approach should have a clear path to clinical impact.

Projects should draw on existing scientific, technical and clinical expertise, clinical research infrastructure and have significant links with industrial partners. Successful projects will produce new mechanistic insights, including those that may:

• Identify opportunities to modify disease pathways.
• Enable the future development of novel therapeutic or early diagnostic approaches.
• Discover novel exploratory biomarkers to stratify disease and monitor disease progression.
• Identify disease subtypes and refine treatments based on precision medicine and stratification through a deeper understanding of novel disease mechanisms.

Applications should primarily focus on neurodegenerative conditions that give rise to dementia. However, applications may also include a focus on related neurodegenerative diseases that share similar underlying mechanisms where there is a significant knowledge gap.

In addition to generating new knowledge about pathogenesis, projects must be of high potential value to industry research and development, addressing known challenges that contribute to high failure rates in treatment development and helping to de-risk early phase dementia trials. Evidence of public and patient involvement is essential.

Projects can last up to five years. Candidates should justify the duration of the project in their application.