Available resources for industry
MRC has made significant investments in research, often in partnership with other funders, that benefit both academic and industry researchers. We describe some examples below.
Patient Cohorts
The Patient Research Cohorts Initiative is a joint initiative funded by the MRC, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in England, the Wales Office of Research and Development and the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health Directorates. More than £7m in MRC funding has been awarded to researchers to create small, extensively defined groups of patients to help detect, treat or prevent disease.
Open to all researchers, these cohorts are a particularly valuable resource for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies looking to carry out early, exploratory trials of potential new treatments or to investigate novel mechanisms and pathways of disease. Using a ready-made cohort of known quality and tailored to a particular disease area makes recruitment quicker and enables researchers to target a particular phenotype and stratify the disease. As well as access to patients, these cohorts may also offer unrivalled source of patient data and tissue.
Download an overview of each funded cohort, including links to the respective websites.
The UK Brain Banks Network
On behalf of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC), the MRC has established an integrated national network of brain tissue banks. The UK Brain Banks network will coordinate a number of brain banks around the country and ensure access across the UK to high quality stored brain tissue and control material for scientific and clinical research purposes. A centre has been funded as part of this network to collect control brain tissue.
The UK Brain Banks network can supply tissue to academic and industry researchers and you can find out how to access brain tissue for research here.
UK Stem Cell Bank
The UK Stem Cell Bank stores ethically approved, quality-controlled stem cell lines derived from adult, fetal and embryonic tissues for use by approved scientists in the UK and overseas. The Stem Cell Bank is open to researchers from both industry and academia. It operates under a strict code of practice overseen by a high-level steering committee. The bank is funded by the MRC and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and is located at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control.
Find more information here, on how to use human embryonic stem cell lines in the UK or how to deposit human stem cell lines in the Bank.
Centre for Therapeutics Discovery (CTD)
MRC Technology (MRCT) established a Centre for Therapeutics Discovery (CTD) to link academic research with industrial quality medicinal chemistry and drug screening in order to drive the translation of MRC science into healthcare products. Based in dedicated laboratories in Mill Hill, London, CTD collaborates with MRC scientists and industry to translate innovative drug targets into potent and selective lead molecules, which can be partnered with industry for lead optimisation and pre-clinical studies.
The MRC Mary Lyon Centre
The MRC Mary Lyon Centre is a new state-of-the-art mouse facility which carries out genome-wide ENU mutagenesis programmes to generate mouse models for monogenic and complex inherited human diseases, comprehensive first-line behavioural, neurosensory and clinical phenotyping, transgenic and gene targeting services, and pathology expertise. In addition, it operates as a mouse strain repository, animal production service and archives embryos, sperm and tissues. One-third of all of the resources in the Mary Lyon Centre are available to external research groups from other MRC units or universities. External groups also have the opportunity to establish collaborations with the MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit, to take advantage of its expertise in systems biology, gene mapping, genomics, and mouse microarray and proteomic technologies.
The MRC Methodology programme
To strengthen the UK’s position as a leader in the methods that underpin health research, MRC and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) launched The Methodology Research Programme (MRP) in 2007. The scope of the programme is broad and includes the tools, theories and disciplines that underpin the design, analysis and evaluation of health sciences research studies. Once established the programme’s funding strategy will be extended beyond academic research and address the methodological research needs of public sector regulatory and advisory health bodies and industry R&D.
In addition to MRP, the MRC has also awarded £16 million to establish the MRC Network of Hubs for Trials Methodology Research.