Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to ensure UK universities are closely co-ordinating their medical research.

My Department funds medical research in universities via the Medical Research Council (MRC). The MRC supports and encourages collaboration between UK universities across all of its funding programmes, and also supports collaboration through targeted initiatives such as:

• The Farr Institute, which is jointly funded by the MRC, Government and research charities and brings together 19 university partners to create a UK-wide platform for health informatics research. The Institute provides the physical and electronic infrastructure to facilitate collaboration across the partner universities, and support their safe use of patient and research data for medical research.
• MRC support for 13 stratified medicine research consortia, addressing conditions such as arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, schizophrenia and dementia. The initiative involves 32 UK universities, with each consortia involving around 7 universities.

Working together, the Research Councils have developed an RCUK framework for principles in funding multi-institutional collaborations in research. Further details on the framework can be found here: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/funding/principles/.

Innovate UK also works with universities to drive translation of university-based research and innovation into commercial applications which tackle disease and life-threatening illnesses. Additionally, Innovate UK, through the Catapult network, provides access to leading-edge technology, facilities and expertise in Cell and Gene Therapy, Precision Medicine and Medicines Technologies.