Working with charities and research funders

As well as our core work with the NIHR, we work with charities and other public funders of research.

This enhances our expertise and secures additional funding across all our research themes, for example:

• Ageing Syndromes. We lead a four-year UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund. This is called ‘Tackling multimorbidity at scale’ and is collaborative award, valued at £3.85M. It involves five UK centres (Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester Met, UCL and Dundee) and focussed on understanding MLTC in hospital.
• Dementia, Mental Health and Neurodegeneration. We lead the International DLB consensus consortium. This will drive the development of DLB diagnostic criteria and promote best management practice in established and prodromal diseases, through evidence-based evolution in the field. Key outputs will be consensus position papers which, as per previous publications, will be widely cited and influence national and international policy, as well as clinical care pathways.
• Liver Disease. Support from the MRC and industry has been instrumental in developing a research/trials platform in rare autoimmune liver disease. This has led to cross-BRC theme collaboration exploring the role of cholestasis and bile acids in complex symptomatology, but also neuronal senescence. This has attracted industry funding for a phase 2 trial of an FXR agonist targeting the liver (PBC) and cognitive impairment (PD).
• Musculoskeletal Disease. Our Versus Arthritis funded research into Inflammatory Arthritis Centre (RACE) is a partnership with Birmingham, Oxford, and Glasgow. Also, the MRC/GSK Experimental Medicine Initiative to Explore New Therapies (EMINENT) programme brings together BRCs in Newcastle, Cambridge, Imperial College and University College, as well as Glasgow, with GSK. This collaboration will provide access to its unlicensed clinic-ready asset portfolio.
• Neuromuscular Disease. BRC funding for mitochondrial research was crucial in securing the Wellcome Centre status (renewed 2021). This is led by Professor Grainne Gorman, who is the Newcastle BRC Neuromuscular Disease Theme Lead.