UK Commits £50mn To Search For Cures For Chronic Inflammatory Diseases

The UK’s Medical Research Council is investing £50mn in a new research centre seeking to develop potentially curative treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases that affect millions of people.

The MRC Centre of Research Excellence in Restorative Immunology, led by the University of Birmingham, will receive funding over 14 years to investigate conditions including inflammatory arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune liver disease and Sjögren’s disease.

Researchers will attempt to move beyond treatments that suppress inflammation towards therapies capable of restoring normal immune function and repairing damaged tissue.

Immune-mediated inflammatory diseases occur when the immune system attacks healthy tissue, potentially causing chronic pain, disability and permanent organ damage. Existing therapies can control inflammation and induce remission in many patients, but there are no cures for the conditions targeted by the new centre and some patients require treatment throughout their lives.

The programme will bring together researchers from eight universities in the UK and Japan, including Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, University College London and Kyoto University, alongside charities and biotechnology companies.

Scientists will initially map how cells interact within healthy and diseased human tissue, using advances in technologies that allow tissue to be studied at increasingly high resolution.

They will then use the findings to construct laboratory models of human tissue and investigate why inflammation persists in some patients. The longer-term objective is to develop precision treatments that can reset abnormal immune responses while promoting tissue repair.

Professor Adam Croft, director of the centre and Arthritis UK chair of rheumatology, said advances in tissue mapping and targeted therapies had created an opportunity to move from controlling disease towards treatments delivered with “curative intent”.

The centre forms part of a broader MRC programme establishing long-term Centres of Research Excellence to tackle complex biomedical problems. Other centres are investigating areas including advanced cardiac therapies, therapeutic genomics, brain disorders and how environmental exposures contribute to inflammatory disease.

MRC centres can receive support for up to 14 years, with continued funding after their initial seven-year period dependent on a successful review.

Dr Ceri Williams, an executive director at the MRC, said achieving lasting remission or cures would require researchers to understand how healthy tissue becomes disrupted and whether those processes can be reversed.

The programme will also train a new generation of researchers in restorative immunology, while working with patients to help shape its research priorities.