Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the National Institute for Health and Care Research on the development of UK based research about (a) emerging drugs and (b) treatment options for patients with MND.

Government responsibility for delivering motor neurone disease (MND) research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation, primarily by the Medical Research Council.

The Government is investing in MND research across a range of areas, including possible treatments. For example, the MND Translational Accelerator, supported by £6 million of Government funding, has twelve projects all aimed at speeding up the development of treatments for MND.

The NIHR has also invested £8 million into EXPERTS-ALS, a pre-clinical study which is designed to accelerate the identification and testing of the most promising treatment candidates for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of MND. This will connect to the later phase platform trial, MND SMART.

In August 2025, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency approved Tofersen to treat SOD1-ALS, a rare form of MND. Research into Tofersen was supported by NIHR’s Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre, and all three trial phases were delivered by the NIHR’s Research Delivery Network, demonstrating tangible impact of NIHR funded research into MND.

The NIHR continues to welcome high quality applications for research into MND. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to the public and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.

Welcoming applications on MND to all NIHR programmes enables maximum flexibility both in terms of the amount of research funding a particular area can be awarded, and the type of research which can be funded.