New £4.25 million grant kick starts UK-wide collaborative research effort
June 2022: Euan MacDonald Centre researchers at the University of Edinburgh are delighted to be part of this initiative, which aims to make big progress towards the ambition of making MND treatable within years, not decades.
A group of charities and government research organisations has awarded £4.25 million to MND experts at six UK universities to kick start collaborative efforts to end MND.
This new ‘MND Collaborative Partnership’ brings together people living with MND, charities LifeArc, MND Association, MND Scotland and My Name’5 Doddie Foundation, government bodies Medical Research Council (MRC) and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), with researchers from King’s College London, University of Sheffield, University of Liverpool, University College London, University of Oxford and University of Edinburgh. The partnership team will work together to find solutions to address problems currently hindering MND research and aims to make big progress towards the ambition of making MND treatable within years, not decades.
Members of this new UK-wide MND research partnership will work together and pool their expertise over three years to:
- coordinate research effort and deliver maximum impact for people with MND
- develop better tests to measure MND progression and that allow doctors to compare different drugs
- improve MND registers so doctors can collect detailed, high-quality data about the disease, and understand which patients are most likely to respond to a particular drug and therefore recommend them for the trials most likely to benefit them
- support people to take part in clinical trials more easily
- develop more robust lab tests and models of disease to enable scientists to test theories about the disease and a pipeline of potential therapeutic agents that could ultimately be used as MND treatments.
They will also launch a major new study involving 1,000 people with MND from across the UK to better understand disease progression and how people respond to new and existing treatments.
The Partnership was formed in 2021 to coordinate and pool funding for research into MND to speed up progress and help research to move towards the clinic and ultimately reach patients faster. Funding for the MND Collaborative Partnership research grant totals £4.25 million and contributions are as follows: LifeArc (£1 million), MND Association (£1 million), My Name’5 Doddie Foundation (£1 million), MND Scotland (£250,000), Medical Research Council (MRC) (£500,000) and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) (£500,000).