NIHR Applied Clinical Research on Very Rare Diseases

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is inviting applications for research into interventions for Very Rare Diseases. The call will cover six NIHR-managed research programmes. For the purpose of this call a very rare disease is one that affects less than 1 in 100,000 of the general population, particularly those whose specialist care is provided through centres funded by the National Specialised Commissioning Group (NSCG) and equivalent arrangements from April 2013. Applications exploring the organisation of super specialised services or their commissioning will be considered where these fit under the remit of participating programmes.

Applications that are multidisciplinary in nature are encouraged. Due to the rarity of the conditions innovative study designs or approaches to recruitment are also encouraged. Applications for the UK arm of multinational trials either led from the UK or as a participating country will be considered. The inclusion of patient views and experiences are considered important by each participating programme. The participating programmes are: Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme; Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme; Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme; Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme; Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR) Programme; Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme.

Further details about the individual programmes are available at the link below. The closing dates for applications vary between programmes and can be found at the individual programme websites via the link below.

Further details