Question
To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the Written Answer by Lord Drayson on 5 May (HL2987), what proportion of funding has been contributed by the Medical Research Council towards collaborative research with scientists based in California, and how this compares to financial contributions by the Californian Institute of Regenerative Medicine to support the same partnership.
Answer
The MRC has identified funds of up to £5 million over four years to support the UK component of collaborative proposals submitted to the CIRM disease team request for applications. The MRC is fully involved in the peer review procedure to ensure the competitiveness of proposals. For successful collaborative proposals, CIRM will fund all project work done within the State of California and the MRC will fund the UK component of project, subject to the available funds. The overall CIRM budget available for the call is $200 million, and in addition to MRC, CIRM is partnering three other agencies under this call for applications under similar arrangements—the State of Victoria, Australia; the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium of Canada; and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN). Through this collaborative funding partner programme, California-based principal investigators (Pis) can collaborate with researchers eligible for funding by any of these agencies.