The UKRI Medical Research Council (MRC) supports world-class discovery and translational research and innovation to address major health and societal challenges, and deliver on UKRI’s mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth and the goals set out in the UKRI Strategy.
We deliver impact through partnerships, collaborating across UKRI, other public bodies, charities, and the life sciences industry. Insights from our research have driven discoveries, fostered innovation and influenced policies that have consistently improved human health in the UK and globally, providing a direct return on investment: public investment in medical research delivers an estimated 25% return, each year.
Our vision is to improve human health and drive economic growth through a mechanistic understanding of biology and disease, enabling earlier diagnosis, advanced therapies, and precision prevention. This is underpinned by the people, skills and infrastructure needed to deliver world-leading research.
Our priorities
Integrated understanding of disease: exploring mechanisms across scales from molecules to populations
We want to understand why, how and when diseases emerge. By capturing new experimental data and unlocking the full potential of the UK’s health and research data – we will enable the earlier diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease, while helping to create the industries of tomorrow.
Precision prevention: understanding illness to protect and promote health
We can intervene before health tips into illness by developing interventions that work for the right people at the right time. This will reduce NHS burden while delivering growth and productivity. We want to understand how we can improve health and health equity and protect the population from emerging threats such as pandemics, climate change and global conflict.
Early diagnosis: enabling intervention at the earliest opportunity
By identifying new markers for pre-disease states, we can progress earlier diagnosis and treatment, reducing time spent in ill health and lowering the associated pressures and costs on the NHS.
Advanced treatments: treating patients safely with precision
By developing advanced treatments that target the drivers of disease more precisely, we can improve the efficacy of novel treatments and reduce side effects, offering curative solutions for patients with limited or no therapeutic options. By de-risking novel technologies, we can facilitate the leverage of private sector investment and boost economic growth.
People and systems: infrastructure and people delivering research to improve health
We work with partners to support mobility between sectors and to help address the decline in clinical researchers. We want to ensure all our researchers can keep pace with technological and digital advances, including AI.
We facilitate access to cutting-edge equipment, data and advanced compute facilities, working in partnership to create a more coherent biomedical research data landscape. This supports the aspiration to harness the whole UK as the world’s largest and most diverse longitudinal population study.
Last updated: 29 July 2026