You can apply for academically-led experimental medicine projects that are conducted in humans. Your project should be based round a clearly articulated gap in understanding of human pathophysiology and have a clear path to clinical impact.
Successful projects will produce new mechanistic insights, including those that may:
- identify opportunities to modify disease pathways
- enable the future development of novel therapeutic or diagnostic approaches.
The panel welcomes all disease areas and interventions.
Before submitting an application, we encourage you to contact the experimental medicine team to arrange a discussion with the programme manager around remit suitability.
There is no limit to the amount of funding you can apply for or the length of your project. You should instead justify the timescale and resources needed in the context of the proposed work.
What your application must include
Your application must involve an experimental intervention or challenge in humans, which has been designed to validate a mechanistic hypothesis. The challenge may be, but is not limited to:
- pharmacological
- immunological
- physiological
- psychological
- infectious.
Activities we support
The following types of proposals are eligible for support:
- the use of novel readouts or technologies related to early evaluation of clinical efficacy or pathogenic mechanism
- the use of drugs, other interventions or measures with established safety profiles in new settings or conditions (for example, repurposing drugs as tool compounds to probe disease mechanism)
- characterisation or phenotyping of subjects using samples from clinical studies may be included where there is a clear link to a current treatment strategy but should not be the sole focus of the proposal:
- limited, hypothesis-driven, retrospective sample analysis may be included at the start of the project to improve the design of the interventional, experimental medicine study
- milestone criteria should clearly detail what data is required from the confirmatory analysis for the project to progress.
Prospective, nested studies within a larger cohort trial may be eligible provided they:
- can demonstrate added value
- are exploring disease mechanisms
- test a novel hypothesis
- address a different question to the main study.
Competitive proposals will aim to address a clear mechanistic question and provide strong rationale to justify the suitability of the experimental system proposed to test the presented hypothesis. Proposals which are predominantly descriptive will not be shortlisted.
Activities we do not support
The following activities are ineligible for support:
Resubmissions
If you’re thinking of resubmitting a previously declined application, please first contact the programme manager and check the guidance on the MRC resubmission process.
MRC industry collaboration framework
If your application involves the collaboration of one or more industrial partners, you should review the information published within the MRC industry collaboration framework (ICF) to decide if you should submit your application under the ICF.
After reading the ICF information, if you decide that your application will include industry collaboration, you will need to include the following within your application for each collaborating industry partner:
The completed ICF form should be uploaded to the Je-S attachments section using the ‘MICA form’ document type. Please type ‘Industry Collaboration Framework form’ in the description box.
The company letter of support must use the available template and be uploaded to the relevant project partner entry you are required to add to your Je-S application.
