Funding opportunities
The routes for funding from MRC depend on the study design, model system and career stage of the applicant:
- experimental medicine panel – studies must involve experimental intervention/challenge in humans and test a focused, mechanistic hypothesis
- applicant-led funding opportunities – experimental intervention or challenge in animals, biomarker discovery, characterisation or phenotyping work using human samples
- fellowships
- other strategic initiatives – for example, the Experimental Medicine Initiative to Explore new Therapies (MRC-GSK EMINENT).
The experimental medicine panel
MRC’s experimental medicine panel has been set up to provide dedicated and sustained support to drive our understanding of human disease pathogenesis and enable the development of new targeted treatments.
These grants will produce new mechanistic insights, identifying opportunities to modify disease pathways and enabling novel therapeutic or diagnostic approaches for future development.
The panel welcomes proposals in all disease areas. There is no limit to the amount of funding you can apply for or the length of your project.
Experimental medicine studies must involve an experimental intervention/challenge in humans and be designed to explore disease mechanisms.
The panel will not support activities including:
- characterisation or phenotyping work aiming to elucidate disease aetiology – supported by the the MRC applicant-led funding opportunities
- biomarker discovery – supported by the the applicant-led funding opportunities
- experimental intervention or challenge in animals, using clinical assets to explore disease mechanisms and pathways – supported by the the research grant applicant led funding opportunity
- development and evaluation of novel therapeutics, diagnostics or devices – supported by the MRC Proof of Concept (PoC)
- development of novel technologies without a clearly defined hypothesis-testing programme
- high-throughput screening approaches to target validation
- pre-clinical model development and validation – supported by the applicant-led funding opportunities
- clinical efficacy trials – supported by the National Institute for Health Research efficacy and mechanism evaluation funding scheme.
We encourage potential applicants to contact the experimental medicine team to arrange a discussion with the programme manager around remit suitability before submitting an application.
MRC and NIHR work in collaboration to provide a spectrum of funding opportunities for clinical studies and trials. To support applicants planning a clinical study or trial, a guidance document has been prepared comparing the typical characteristics of projects supported by the Experimental Medicine Panel, MRC PoC, EME and HTA.
Applicant-led experimental medicine applications
If your experimental medicine proposal does not fit the remit criteria for the experimental medicine panel, you may apply to the relevant applicant-led funding opportunities. These opportunities support experimental medicine approaches in the broadest sense including, but not limited to, the study of human cells, tissues, data, mechanisms and disease, for example in reverse translation to explore mechanisms in human samples or participants, well-justified model systems or data resources.
Find out more about application timelines.
