Clinical study awards

/Clinical study awards are for clinical trials and related studies, applications must be made via involvement with an Arthritis Research UK Clinical Studies Group (CSG). CSG support must be sought by applicant(s). To assist in considering whether to support a given proposal the CSG may seek an initial international peer commentary.

Every study, whilst remaining under the scientific control of the Chief Investigator (CI), must be managed by a UK CRC accredited Clinical Trial Unit or affiliated personnel or be engaged in a mentorship arrangement.

Funding is available for:

  • Literature reviews and meta-analyses
  • Pilot and feasibility studies for recruitment, biomarkers and outcome assessments
  • Formal randomised clinical trials
  • Other well designed cohort studies, qualitative studies research designed to evaluate and test new interventions intervention such as medication, psychotherapy, new devices, or new approaches to surgery or radiation therapy.

Process

 Application Deadline Clinical Studies Sub-committee meeting
Approximately May  Approximately September
 Approximately November  Approximately March

Applications supported by a Clinical Study Group and submitted to the Arthritis Research UK Clinical Studies Sub-committee for consideration for funding are subject to formal external peer review by our head office team.

Applicants are invited to respond to the anonymised feedback in advance of the Clinical Studies Sub-committee meeting in order to encourage an iterative understanding and development of prioritised proposals by the funding committee.

Conditions of application

  • There are no financial or duration limits.
  • Applications must be submitted with CSG support.
  • We permit, where appropriate, industrial partner involvement
  • We support research ‘add ons’ to clinical trials and related studies
  • We encourage Groups to capitalise on supported clinical studies to develop such resources for the wider research benefit of the community in that area. Such resources must be embedded within hypothesis led, strategically directed clinical studies aiming for patient benefit, only in exceptional circumstances would a CSG consider putting forward a proposal for a bank in the absence of any directly linked study.
  • A Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) member is required as a co-applicant on the application.

The complexity of running a clinical trial requires input from a multidisciplinary team with relevant expertise. It is important that every study, whilst remaining under the scientific control of the Chief Investigator (CI), must be managed by an UKCRC-registered CTU or be engaged in a mentorship arrangement. CTUs are specialist units which have been set up with a specific remit to design, conduct and analyse, via provision of specialist expert statistical, epidemiological and other methodological advice and coordination, to undertake successful clinical trials. The authoritative web resource for information about the UKCRC Registered CTUs is: http://www.ukcrc-ctu.org.uk

Roles

Co-applicant

Individual who will have had intellectual input into the application and is expected to be involved in the project.

If you wish to add a co-applicant that is based outside the UK please contact our research department.

Collaborator

An individual named in the body of the application who will supply research materials, specific expertise or access to patients, but will not be involved in the day-to-day execution of the project.

Main Applicant

May/may not be the Chief Investigator, if the Main Applicant is the Chief Investigator they should not be listed as a co-applicant in this section also.

Advisor

Refers to the point of contact person for administrative issues or other true Advisor. The CSG Lead should be routinely added as an advisor.

Costing

  • Requested salary costs should be based on a recognised pay model or the host institution’s local salary scale, including London weighting if appropriate. We must be advised of the pay model used and, where a local pay model is to be applied, a copy of the appropriate scale must be sent with the application. Please note that a maximum of spine point 43 on the National Scale is allowed for postdoctoral research staff, and that special justification will be required for funding senior postdoctoral research staff between points 37 and 42 (RA2 equivalent).
  • Tuition fees are not usually provided on grants unless it is specifically stated that these may be applied for in a particular funding scheme.
  • A sum to allow for cost of living increases for salaries, etc in future years must be included in the costs requested. A compound allowance should be factored into the costing for this purpose. The percentage used to calculate the compound inflationary allowance must be the same as the most recent pay award agreed by the institution for the grade on which the individual is to be employed.
  • The salary of a researcher working towards a PhD should be costed at postdoctoral level if it is envisaged that the candidate will obtain his/her PhD within a reasonable time after the start of the grant.
  • Travel - exclude from grant application - Clinical studies are eligible to apply for discretionary travel awards to assist their attendance (or that of research staff employed on the grant or working in their laboratory) at prestigious or relevant national or international scientific meetings in order to present Arthritis Research UK-supported work. The maximum total amount allotted for travel is a pro rata sum of £750 per year. Applications for travel awards may be made at any time on the appropriate form but this must be submitted at least 1month before the date of the meeting and include an abstract of the work to be presented.
  • Open access Publication charges - exclude from grant application - From January 2007, a copy of the final manuscript of all peer reviewed research papers supported in whole, or in part, by an Arthritis Research UK grant must be deposited in an open access archive such as UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) to be made freely available as soon as possible, and in any event within 6 months of the journal publisher’s official date of final publication. Funding is available to cover the costs of page processing charges levied by publishers who support the open access model. Application may be made at any time on the appropriate form and must be accompanied by a preprint of the paper and a letter of acceptance from the journal.
  • Attribution of Costs between NHS and external funders - Please refer to Department of Health documents
    • ‘Attributing revenue costs of externally-funded non-commercial research in the NHS (ARCO)’ dated December 2005
    • HSG(97)32: ‘Responsibilities for meeting Patient Care Costs associated with Research and Development in the NHS’

Costs of activities are attributed as one of three categories:

  • Research Costs
  • NHS Support Costs
  • Treatment Costs

Arthritis Research UK will only fund Research Costs. It is anticipated that much of the Research Costs requested will be expended by the relevant Clinical trial Unit (CTU) with whom you are collaborating.

By the time a proposal is submitted for research funding an evaluation of the full cost of the study should have been completed, identifying how these components will be resourced from the relevant parties.

Applicants should undertake parallel negotiations about NHS Support Costs and Research Costs with:

  • the Trust R& D Department
  • the Comprehensive Local Research Network (CLRN), either local to the applicant’s institution or the one local to the major/one of the major potential recruitment sites
  • the relevant service provider
  • the Clinical Trials Unit

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network (CRN) Portfolio is used to manage the allocation of NHS infrastructure funding. The NIHR CRN Portfolio comprises the NIHR Portfolio in England and the corresponding portfolios of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

In England, the Department of Health has determined that studies that are funded by NIHR non-commercial Partners are automatically eligible to be included in the Portfolio. We are an NIHR non-commercial Partner and as such in England funding of identified activities is obtainable from NIHR CRN via the Comprehensive Clinical Research Network (CCRN). There are equivalent structures in the devolved nations. The boundaries between costs are blurred in some areas, but will be clarified as experience is gained from the negotiations between research funders, the Department of Health and NIHR CRN.

Application deadlines

Clinical studies: May 26 and December 01, 2010

Pilot/feasibility grants: Ongoing

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