Apply for funding to research motor neurone disease (MND).
You can get funding through any:
You should apply through the existing funding opportunity that is most relevant to your science area and career stage.
We will usually fund up to 80% of your project’s full economic cost.
You must meet the criteria for the specific funding opportunity you are applying to.
To get advice on suitable funding opportunities, contact nmhb@mrc.ukri.org
MRC in partnership with NIHR are seeking to encourage high-quality funding applications in MND to any of our research board or panel grant or fellowship opportunities.
MND is a devastating neurodegenerative disease, characterised by loss of motor neurone function. In patients suffering with MND, signals from the motor neurones gradually stop reaching the muscles causing them to weaken, stiffen and waste.
MND affects adults of any age but is more likely to affect people over the age of 50.
Currently, there are approximately 5,000 people living with MND in the UK, and the lifetime risk of developing MND is 1 in 300.
The average life expectancy of someone with MND from diagnosis is just 18 months and there is currently no cure. Treatments for MND therefore focus on helping reduce the impact MND has on a person’s daily life.
Research on MND is at an exciting juncture. Significant advances in understanding disease pathogenesis and identifying therapeutic targets are attracting unprecedented interest from industry and a genuine optimism that this disease is tractable.
Through this highlight notice, applicants are invited to submit innovative research proposals to MRC that aim to:
Find out about NIHR’s specific remit requirements.
Through this highlight notice, MRC and NIHR are encouraging applicants to work in partnership across the MND research community and with researchers in other relevant and aligned areas. Applicants will thereby continue to build upon the neurodegenerative research ecosystem.
If you are considering submitting an application, please first contact nmhb@mrc.ukri.org who will advise you on suitable funding opportunities.
Please then follow the application process of the most appropriate opportunity based on the scientific or clinical area of your research and your career stage.
All applicants are requested to reference this highlight notice in their ‘objectives’ and the ‘case for support’.
All applications received under this highlight notice will be assessed by the relevant MRC research board or panel through MRC’s standard assessment procedure.
Email: nmhb@mrc.ukri.org
Dr Oiwi Parker Jones, University of Oxford, £1,351,705
This career development award aims to create a neural speech prosthetic to restore communication to patients who are unable to control their vocal articulators due to brain stem stroke or MND.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Brain commands and beyond: decoding inner speech for neural prosthetics.
Dr Andras Lakatos, University of Cambridge, £2,045,118
This senior clinical fellowship award will use a newly developed model system, created from patient cells, to study the molecular changes in individual cells and understand the initiation and progression of ALS. This may help to identify early markers of ALS which can help to guide treatment.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Interrogation of links between risks and early pathogenesis at single cell resolution in a novel human ALS organoid neuraxis model.
Professor John Atack, Cardiff University, £153,440
Funded through the MRC/AstraZeneca Centre for Lead Discovery, this project aims to identify small molecules that bind to the long non-coding RNA NEAT1_2 to stabilise it and increase expression.
NEAT1_2 is essential to paraspeckle formation (protein complexes that perform a neuroprotective function in ALS) therefore these small molecules could increase paraspeckle formation and reduce degeneration of motor neurons in ALS.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Small molecule modulators of lncRNA NEAT1_2: a novel approach to enhancing the endogenous neuroprotective response in ALS.
Dr Tatyana Shelkovnikova, The University of Sheffield, £374,676
This research grant investigates the link between protein complexes called paraspeckles and ALS.
The RNA that induces formation of these paraspeckles becomes accumulated in ALS motor neurons, therefore the investigators aim to find small molecules that can modulate the complexes, with the potential for such molecules to be used in research and drug discovery.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Mechanistic studies of ALS-causative mutations and RNP-focused drug discovery using in vitro reconstitution of RNP complexes.
Professor Christopher Miller, King’s College London, £1,083,310
This research grant investigates the role of GSK3beta and AMP Kinase in regulating binding of VAPB-PTPIP51 to ER-mitochondria and whether disruption of this induces neurodegenerative disease.
Damage to functions regulated by ER-mitochondria signalling, mediated by VAPB-PTPIP51, is a feature of ALS therefore this work could facilitate the design of potential therapeutics.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Structural and functional studies of the VAPB-PTPIP51 ER-mitochondria tethering proteins in neurodegenerative diseases.
Professor Seth Grant, The University of Edinburgh, £609,489
Funded through the MRC-AMED neurosciences funding opportunity, this collaborative project studies the pathology of synapses in ALS and FTD and aims to correlate this with behavioural phenotypes.
This could aid understanding of the nature of vulnerable and resilient synapses and how molecular perturbations can impact specific synapses, circuits and brain regions.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Synaptic pathology in ALS-FTD.
Dr Kiterie Faller, The University of Edinburgh, £1,362,657
This clinician scientist fellowship investigates changes in metabolism in two mouse models of MND in order to identify common changes that could be used as therapeutic targets.
Targets found will be validated in patient samples before selected metabolic pathways are modulated to test whether this can reverse pathological changes.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Energy metabolism in motor neuron diseases.
Dr Francois Halloy, University of Oxford, £508,143
This fellowship award aimed to develop nanobodies for the delivery of oligonucleotide (ON) therapies across the blood brain barrier (BBB) for treatment of Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
Delivery of ON therapies across biological barriers such as the BBB has been a major blockade to development of these therapies for patients. One method of improving delivery is to join the ON to a molecule such as an antibody to facilitate uptake. Nanobodies are 10 times smaller than standard antibodies and are easier to produce and modify. This grant aimed to investigate the potential of nanobodies for ON delivery and develop new nanobodies for this purpose.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: MICA: single-domain antibody oligonucleotides conjugates for brain delivery of oligonucleotide therapeutics.
David Lester, University of Oxford, £211,703
This fellowship award aims to understand why MND causes different symptoms and variable life expectancy in those who develop the disease. The research will study different patterns of proteins found in the spinal fluid of MND patients and use machine learning to identify patterns of proteins that relate to different patterns of MND symptoms and prognosis. Eventually, this work could lead to treatments that are tailored to patients’ specific patterns of MND.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: The biochemical stratification of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Roger Whittaker, Newcastle University, £212,790
This research grant aims to test the usability of a new form of MRI, called motor unit MRI (MUMRI), which can detect an early symptom of MND called fasciculation (muscle twitching).
MUMRI uses technology already available on current MRI scanners and this award will test the applicability of the technique on the most common makes of MRI scanners in the NHS. If successful, MUMRI would offer a non-invasive and faster way of detecting fasciculation so that MND can be detected earlier, and patients can benefit from earlier intervention and enrolment on clinical trials.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Fasciculation IN Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Using MUMRI (FINALSUM).
Akshay Bhinge, University of Exeter, £791,537
This research grant aims to understand how the incorrect migration of a protein called TDP43 from the cell nucleus into the cytoplasm causes defects in a process called RNA splicing. RNA splicing allows nerve cells to create different types of proteins require for normal function and survival of the cells. This process is defective in ALS so this award will use nerve cells created from ALS patient cells to investigate how this goes wrong.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Dysregulation of RNA processing as a driver of motor neuron dysfunction in ALS.
Ilary Alodi, University of St Andrews
This project aims to investigate the role of interneurons in ALS. In a mouse model of familial ALS, a specific group of inhibitory interneurons loses its connection to motor neurons early in the disease causing the motor neurons to degenerate.
Researchers aim to establish whether this is true in mouse models of other familial ALS types and in sporadic cases, using human post mortem tissue. They also aim to improve and further develop a gene therapy which has been shown to rescue connectivity between interneurons and motor neurons in mice.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: ALS: treating the circuit behind the disease.
Alfredo Iacoangeli, King’s College London, £983,707
This project will use a large dataset of MND patients and healthy controls to investigate the role of human endogenous retroviruses and structural variants in ALS. Structural variants are large DNA sequences within our genome which may be present, absent or expanded. Human endogenous retroviruses are a form of structural variant that have been shown to be toxic to cultured motor neurons and cause a form of MND in mice.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: A large-scale multi-omics study to investigate the role of human endogenous retroviruses and structural variants in ALS .
Kurt De Vos, University of Sheffield, £2,969,994
This award aims to investigate what causes synapses to malfunction in ALS and fronto-temporal dementia (FTD), with a particular focus on a specific part of the synapse called the presynapse. The presynapse has been shown to be the main site of damage in ALS/FTD and understanding how this is disrupted and how this causes breakdown in communication between neurons could lead to new therapies.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: SYNDYS-ALS/FTD.
Johnny Tam, The University of Edinburgh, £268,338
This fellowship award aims to develop an App that collects speech data from MND patients which will then be analysed using AI approaches to identify speech-based digital biomarkers of MND. This could allow screening of individuals with suspected MND and provide sensitive measures of disease severity for clinical care and drug trials.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Digital speech biomarkers in MND.
Juan Burrone, King’s College London, £2,738,681
This programme of work aims to identify the molecular mechanisms underlying axonal dysfunction in human ALS/FTD neurons and develop methods to restore or normalise the expression of genes found to be involved. This could allow the development of therapies that restore normal function at an early stage of the disease, rather than axon loss at a later stage.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: Dissecting the early dysregulation of neuronal output in human neurons: an opportunity for a functional rescue of ALS/FTD.
Pietro Fratta, University College London, £1,050,403
This research grant aims to investigate the role of AARS1 cryptic peptide in the degradation and loss of neurons that occurs in ALS, the most common type of MND. Cryptic peptides are found in proteins when there has been a mistake in the process of converting RNA ‘codes’ into proteins. Characterising how Cryptic AARS1 might contribute to ALS is key to understanding the role of aaRS proteins in ALS and could reveal disease mechanisms common to different neurological diseases.
Find out more about the project on Gateway to Research: The role of AARS1 cryptic splicing in ALS: unravelling the mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration in TDP-43 proteinopathies.
