New Funding Call now open: MRC Impact Accelerator Account (formally CiC) 2022

On 21 September 2022, Oxford hosted the annual meeting for the Tropical Infectious Disease Consortium (TIDC), which was recently awarded a further £1.6 million from the UKRI Medical Research Council (MRC) via the Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), previously called “Confidence in Concept” (CiC).

The TIDC is a strategic partnership between the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), the UK Health Security Agency (formally PHE), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the University of Oxford and has now been expanded to include the UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Pirbright Institute.

The fund will provide awards, typically in the region of £50K, for projects (lasting between 6 and 18 months) that accelerate the transition from discovery science into the early/late stages of therapeutic, diagnostic and vaccine development by supporting key feasibility studies to establish the viability of an approach or generate the materials/technologies for ongoing translational activity.

The first funding call has just been announced: https://lstmed.ac.uk/MRCIAA

The annual meeting in September was hosted at the Levine Building, Trinity College, University of Oxford and was co-organised by Simon, Patries and Rachel Tanner from the Department of Biology. The meeting provided a networking opportunity for all the TIDC partners to help catalyse applications for new translational projects focussed on diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, vector control tools, translational focussed informatics, and translational enabling technologies. The meeting also highlighted opportunities, facilities and expertise within the Consortium’s partners for collaborative research; showcased the breadth and depth of previously-funded projects; and enabled the MRC to inform awardees and interested parties of pathways to further translational research funding (e.g., DPFS/TSB). From the Draper Lab, Kirsty gave a showcase presentation, entitled: “Avidity engineering of monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for infectious diseases”.