The UCLH BRC Inflammation, Immunity and Immunotherapeutics Theme (III) recently awarded grants to support research proposals for translational research closely aligned to the III Theme’s strategy.
The theme received a total of 22 applications, of which 12 were shortlisted. After a rigorous scoring process by the BRC III Board and external reviewers, 8 applications (listed below) have been granted funding to the tune of £528K.
The proposals submitted had to meet three key objectives:
- Identification and validation of targets for novel therapies
- Validation of biomarkers and novel functional imaging to assess responses to novel therapies
- Delivery of novel therapies (including drug development, drug repurposing, cell & gene therapies, regenerative medicine) in proof of concept clinical trials.
BRC III Theme Call Proposals Awarded:
1. Neutrophil activation as a novel biomarker and therapeutic target in interstitial lung disease - Dr J Porter.
2. Endotyping SLE and Sjogren’s syndrome patients in adult, adolescent and paediatric populations for precision medicine therapeutic approaches (The NUANCE Study) - Dr C Cuirtin.
3. Interferon regulation of lipid metabolism in Autoimmunity: Towards patient stratification and identification of novel targets for cardiovascular risk in SLE – Dr I Pineda-Torra.
4. Precision prescribing for clinical infection syndromes (PRECISE) - Dr L Shallcross.
5. Functional modelling of novel STAT1 variants amenable to gene editing – Dr S Burns, Dr. S Hanson
6. Quantitative imaging biomarkers of skeletal inflammation (Biological Validation and Response Prediction) - Dr T Bray.
7. Determining the clinical utility of measuring complement Factor H – Dr R Sofat.
8. Functional consequences of B cell depletion therapy on adaptive immunity to Streptococcus pneumoniae – Prof J Brown.