The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) are establishing a £25M UK Regenerative Medicine Platform (UKRMP) to address the technical and scientific challenges associated with translating promising scientific discoveries in this area towards clinical impact.

At its core the UKRMP will comprise several interdisciplinary and complementary research hubs that will together provide a world-leading programme to promote the development of regenerative therapies. BBSRC, EPSRC and MRC are therefore inviting proposals to establish high quality, collaborative research groupings to address key challenges in translational regenerative medicine.

The call aims to fund the establishment of up to five interdisciplinary research hubs with one award expected to be made in each identified thematic area. The establishment of the hubs will be based on scientific excellence along with the critical mass to address key developmental challenges for the field. This first stage in the development of the UKRMP will focus on approaches with broad applicability. Whilst system/organ-level and/or disease model exemplars may be useful to provide “real world” context, developing an approach focussed on tackling that exemplar alone is not within the remit of this call. A second stage of the UKRMP, being planned for 2013/14, will seek to exploit the hubs to deliver more disease-specific programmes.

A number of barriers to developing regenerative medicine therapies and products were identified by the research community through the 2011 Regenerative Medicine ‘Forward Look’ workshop, a report of which is available. The Strategy for UK Regenerative Medicine further articulated the key challenges for the area, and it is apparent that a there are a number of key areas where the field lacks knowledge and the tools and technologies for progress.

Accordingly BBSRC, EPSRC and MRC are seeking proposals that bring together teams of researchers to address a number of strategically important, tractable translational challenges refined from the community’s responses to the scoping call for Expressions of Interest in the UKRMP.

For further information please visit the UK Regenerative Platform Medicine website.