Invite only: Precision prevention: biological mechanisms of response variation

Open UKRI funding opportunity · Grant. Closes 2026-11-05. Total fund £15 million. Opportunity page: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/invite-only-precision-prevention-biological-mechanisms-of-response-variation/

Apply for funding to investigate why biomedical prevention interventions work differently across people. Projects must generate mechanistic evidence in humans by testing biomedical experimental interventions or challenges in pre-disease or early disease states, providing insight into how to improve the targeting and effectiveness of precision prevention strategies.

Your project must:

- include an experimental intervention or challenge in humans

- focus on a mechanistic hypothesis

The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £5 million over a duration of up to five years. MRC will fund 80% of your project’s full economic cost.

You must have submitted a mandatory expression of interest (EOI) and be invited to submit a full application.

What we're looking for Scope

As the UK population grows and ages, increasing rates of ill health and declining healthy life expectancy are contributing to a worrying trajectory for health outcomes. The shift to prevention from treatment as part of the 10-year NHS health plan for England has the potential to reduce the burden of multiple long-term conditions and chronic diseases, support an ageing population, tackle health inequalities, lower associated NHS costs, boost productivity and drive economic growth.

Some effective prevention interventions already exist, but their impact is often limited by substantial variation in how individuals and populations respond. Heterogeneity is commonly observed in response, risk reduction, adverse effects, and clinical outcomes associated with biomedical interventions. The biological mechanistic pathways underpinning this variation are poorly understood.

Current approaches typically rely on average effects across diverse populations, leading to suboptimal benefit,…