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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what proportion of the core science budget was allocated to fund medical trials of new drugs during the last period for which data is available.

UK Research and Innovation is funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and supports basic research into the development of new drugs including pre-clinical research and early stage clinical trials. It does not routinely analyse data on the number of trials specifically relating to the development of new drugs.

UK Research and Innovation supports clinical trials through the Medical Research Council (MRC) including early phase clinical stage trials through ‘response mode’ schemes such as the Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme, which supports pre-clinical development and early clinical trial of novel therapeutics including new and repurposing of existing therapies.

Later stage trials are funded through the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme (which is a jointly funded partnership between MRC and the National Institute for Health Research). The MRC also supports:

• The Joint Global Health Trials programme in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research, the Department for International Development and the Wellcome Trust.
• The European Developing Countries Clinical Trials programme (EDCTP), with a specific focus on poverty-related infectious diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.

These provide funding to later stage trials including studies evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions with potential to make a step-change in the promotion of health, treatment of disease and improvement of rehabilitation or long-term care.

A recent example of a clinical trial project for a new medicine is the award of over £2.7 million for a Clinical Trial of a Novel Treatment for Clostridium difficile (associated diarrhoea) from Innovate UK as part of the Biomedical Catalyst. This was awarded to MGB Biopharma Ltd based in Glasgow for this new class of small molecule antibiotic.