I love talking to people about their role, what excites them, and how they are making a difference, whether it is one of the world-leading scientists we support, or our talented staff in UKRI who enable the scientific discoveries to happen.
At the moment I’m visiting different regions across the UK. I can see, and feel, the impact our research is having by improving healthcare, and through exciting new businesses emerging from creative science we’ve supported in universities and our institutes.
MRC’s top priorities
I still work as a clinician in the NHS and run a research group in Cambridge. This is really important because it grounds what I do for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). In the context of what patients want and need, and in challenging the university and health sector.
The families I see in clinic are affected by inherited neurological diseases. They often do not have a diagnosis or a treatment available, and my research team is trying to address that. The Medical Research Council (MRC) is trying to do the same thing but on a much larger scale. We are working with colleagues across UKRI to drive health and human life sciences research and make the UK the leading country in Europe.
Our over-arching aim is to understand:
- the origins and mechanisms of diseases so we can pick them up early (diagnosis)
- develop better treatments (without side effects)
- and ultimately to prevent them from ever occurring (precision prevention)
This requires people with the right skills and a national research infrastructure so we can tackle difficult problems at pace.
How the research we support improves lives
This year saw the publication of the government’s Industrial Strategy, Life Sciences Sector Plan, and NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England. We helped shape these strategies, and we are committed to delivering them.
Our ability to do this depends on years (and sometimes decades) of curiosity-driven investigator-led research. The plans provide a focus so we can capitalise on the discoveries to deliver specific actions. Actions that will really make a difference to the country and its citizens.
Over recent months we have seen how the research we support can deliver new treatments that really do change people’s lives. Such as gene therapy for inherited blindness and a tool to predict the best diabetes drug for each patient. And new mental health treatments attracting big investments from overseas into the UK.
This shows we can deliver health benefits and help the economy grow at the same time. We now need to do this faster and at a greater scale.
How we’re working in partnership
I’m working with colleagues across UKRI and our partner organisations on a delivery plan to address government priorities which will ‘go live’ in early 2026. To do this we work with:
- the National Institute for Health and Care Research
- major charities including Wellcome, Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation
- and others – particularly with key industry partners
Partnership across government will be essential to help us deliver our aims. This will ensure that UKRI and MRC-funded health and life sciences researchers have access to the full range of finance, infrastructure and skills required to successfully create and translate innovation.
We need to ensure that every pound we spend will be highly impactful, and we will need to measure that.
Focus areas for the future
At the moment we are developing plans for significant investment in obesity research. Amazingly, we know very little about how obesity causes cancer and heart disease and stroke, which are the main ways it shortens lives. New technologies mean we can now get to the bottom of these issues.
We also want to better harness artificial intelligence to accelerate biomedical discoveries including new drugs, amongst other things.
Supporting our scientists to solve big problems
We are totally refreshing our portfolio of long-term investments through MRC Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs). These are challenge-led awards for up to 14 years focused on solving a major, difficult problem that will dramatically improve health.
We have made five awards to date, spanning early discovery science to clinical applications, bringing in other charity and industry co-funding and project partners.
We anticipate making two to four new awards every year. Round four is open for applications, so now is the time to think about what challenge you would like to solve and why this is important. This will help build our portfolio across the whole of medicine, focused on what MRC CoREs will deliver for the country and when.
Find out more
Apply to round four of MRC CoRE funding. In this round, outline applications can address any challenge or focus on the development and translation of blood products (in partnership with the Ministry of Defence).
If there’s anything you’d like to discuss about the MRC CoRE application process, please contact: core@mrc.ukri.org
Read about how we’ve recently simplified access to MRC applicant-led funding with a new always-open approach to funding.
Professor Patrick Chinnery plays a key role in developing, promoting and implementing MRC research programmes, working with national and international partners. He aims to help deliver the translation of the world’s most exciting research into human biology and disease rapidly into improved healthcare. As a practising clinician, he is well placed to do so.
Professor Chinnery’s clinical expertise is in neurology. He worked in Newcastle for many years, latterly as Director of the Institute of Genetic Medicine. In 2015, he moved to Cambridge, where he leads a research programme on mitochondrial genomics and human diseases in the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, where he is a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow and Head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences.