Kidney Research UK

Medical Research Funding

Background

Founded in 1961, Kidney Research UK (formerly the National Kidney Research Fund) is the largest funder of research into the prevention, treatment and management of kidney disease. Every year we allocate around 75% of our total charitable income to research funding, awarding around 20 new grants every year.

We are committed to understanding the causes of kidney disease to enable development of better treatments, and to making life better for the millions of patients diagnosed with, and already suffering from, kidney diseases. As such, medical research is at the very heart of our agenda, and we are keen to support all efforts to improve the excellence of the UK's medical researchenvironment in order to deliver improved treatment to patients.

Prioritising Renal Research

Our mission is to fund life-saving research into kidney disease, to improve the quality of life of those with the kidney disorders and to increase public awareness of kidney disease. To achieve this, greater funding needs to be made available for renal research, which means ensuring, that kidney disease is aligned with other top health priorities, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

It is known that ~ 5000 people in the UK develop end stage renal failure each year. Treatment for end stage renal failure which includes dialysis and transplantation, accounts for over 2% of NHS spending. Moreover, chronic kidney disease is thought to affect around three million people in the UK, and the incidence of kidney cancer has risen by 68% in the last 20 years.

However, renal research has not been afforded as high a priority within the Government's research agenda as its expense to the NHS would justify. We would like to see a closer alignment of Government research funding priorities to health needs in this area, so that crucial renal research can be carried out to improve the outcome for patients with kidney disease.

Funding for Medical Training

We work alongside other research funders, professional associations, and the pharmaceutical industry to fund a range of research projects. However, we also support the training of medical researchers, awarding fellowships to clinicians and supporting scientists undertaking research.

The future of renal research relies on the investment in the people that carry it out. It is essential that in addition to increasing the funding for research into kidney disease, money is invested in the training of a cadre of doctors and scientists committed to renal research. In a recent analysis of the long-term outcomes of our research spending, we found that our Clinical Training Fellowships and Clinical Research Fellowships were highly successful.

Supporting Clinical Trials

Traditionally, the renal community has had great difficulty launching and running clinical trials to compete with those in the fields of cardiovascular disease and cancer. This is explained by the relatively lower perceived importance of kidney diseases. The situation has not been helped by the regulatory climate over the last decade which has become so fierce, that only trials with huge investment have much chance of being supported.

There is a major gap in the funding of clinical trials that are not industry-sponsored. As the funds required for this type of work are large, and timescales long, they are generally beyond the scope of charities such as Kidney Research UK.

We would like to see the funding of clinical trials prioritised by the Government as part of its R&D strategy. This should include the development nationally of the appropriate infrastructure and administration required to support this work and ensure that the costs and bureaucracy involved in running trials are kept to a minimum.

Streamlining Government Research Funding

We believe that, to maximise the effectiveness of the Government's R&D strategy in the field of medical research, it is essential to maintain separate funding streams for basic science and clinical research. In basic science, the key challenge is to ensure investment develops the right environment to promote invention and discovery. In clinical research, the need is to increase investment in experimental medicine, clinical trials and opportunities for translational research.

In addition to these two funding streams, we would also support further investigation into NHS service delivery. There has been very little coordinated activity in this area to date.

UK at the Forefront of Biomedical Research

Fundamental biomedical research has been UK strength, and the recent progress in genomics presents opportunities. For example, genetic inheritance has a major effect on the development of kidney disease. In 1995, stakeholders from across the renal and genetics fields launched a UK Renal Genetics Group, which works to develop genetic research, build a DNA Database, as well as to exchange ideas, expertise and maximise collaborations.

Keeping the UK at the forefront of these developments is likely to have substantial knock-on benefits for the pharmaceutical industry and biotech sector, in addition to the direct benefits to medicine. We therefore believe that the scale of fundamental biomedical research should be increased and that expansion in other areas of research should not be at the expense of this.

Using IT to Share Data for Research

Renal services have long been at the forefront of healthcare IT, since the renal IT systems developed in London in the early 1980s. Renal units are sharing data with the UK Renal Registry through a virtual network that includes 90% of UK services.

The potential benefits from the information that is beginning to flow from such initiatives as Connecting for Health (CfH) are therefore very apparent to us. CfH could be a huge asset in clinical, epidemiological and clinical is something missing here?, and we are keen to see that this potential is realised.

Many surveys have suggested that patients are overwhelmingly in favour of their information being used this way. In fact, our experience shows that the majority of renal patients are keen to access their own data.

A Renal Research Consortium

We welcomed the Department of Health's recently launched "Best Research for Best Health" framework, which sets out its R&D strategy for the next five years. In particular, we fully support the UK Clinical Research Collaboration initiative, which seeks to speed up the development of new medicines and treatments by expanding the number and range of clinical trials. It brings together, via a series of research networks, the main funding bodies for clinical research, academic medicine, the NHS, the AMRC, regulatory bodies, patients and industry to achieve this aim.

The six research networks are based on a number of topic-specific areas, such as diabetes. Given the increasing incidence of chronic kidney disease in the UK, which is set to increase over the next decade, we believe that a renal research consortium could effectively link into the established networks.

Not only will such a consortium support clinical research into the treatment and management of kidney disease, it will also bring the renal community together to identify key priorities and emerging areas for research, as well as help to develop better training for researchers and streamline research procedures to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.