MND Scotland nets £150k in research funding

MND Scotland has secured over £151,000 as a result of the charity’s application to the UK Government’s COVID-19 mitigation funding for research organisations.

The funding comes from the ‘Medical Research Charities Early-Career Researcher Support Fund 2021-22’ which is administered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and comprises £15 million from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and £5 million from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

The money has been made available to medical research charities like MND Scotland to ensure they can continue supporting early career researcher awardees during times of financial hardship as a result of the global Coronavirus pandemic.

MND Scotland is one of 82 medical research charities receiving support from the scheme, with 171 students, 265 early career researchers and 15 early career researcher support roles being supported.

Steven Karlsson-Brown, MND Scotland’s Research Officer, said: “This outcome is most welcome after a turbulent few years and goes a long way in ensuring we can continue our commitment to funding cutting-edge research that we hope will bring us ever closer to a cure for MND.

“It’s a direct result of MND Scotland’s membership of the Association of Medical Research Charities that we were able to capitalise on this scheme and we are thankful to them for their committed campaign work.

“At MND Scotland, we strive to make every penny raised for research stretch as far as possible and thanks to our membership of the Association of Medical Research Charities, we have benefited from a ‘gift aid’ style system which has resulted in us leveraging at least another £204,000 of Government funding for research projects both in Scotland and south of the border. This does not include the MND-SMART clinical trial, which has thus far been able to claim over £95,000 in cost-savings.

“What this means is that the money raised by our dedicated army of fundraisers is able to go that much further.”