Experimental medicine stage one
Experimental medicine stage one supports academic researchers conducting human intervention studies to understand disease mechanisms and identify paths towards future treatments or diagnostics.
Funder: UK Research and Innovation
Due Dates: April 14, 2027 (Stage one) | September 1, 2027 (Invited stage two) | February 23, 2028 (Deferred stage two)
Funding Amounts: No upper funding or duration limit; 80% of full economic costs and 100% of permitted exceptions
Summary: Supports academically led experimental studies in humans that test mechanistic hypotheses about the causes, progression and treatment of disease.
Key Information: Projects must include a human intervention or challenge with an established safety profile, not primarily assess treatment safety or efficacy.
Description
The Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, funds experimental medicine projects addressing gaps in understanding human pathophysiology. Projects must test a mechanistic hypothesis and offer a clear path to clinical impact. The programme spans all human disease areas in UK and global health contexts, seeking insights that could identify opportunities to modify disease pathways or enable future therapeutic or diagnostic approaches.
Challenges may be pharmacological, immunological, physiological, psychological or infectious. Supported approaches include novel readouts used primarily to understand disease mechanisms and established drugs used as investigative tools in new settings. Prospective studies nested within larger trials can qualify when they add value and test a distinct mechanistic question. Limited retrospective sample analysis can inform intervention design but cannot be the sole focus.
